Trying to get life into any sort of perspective is supremely difficult. Imagine the universe beginning from the titanic explosion of absolutely nothing, because nothing is exactly what existed prior to the Big Bang, as far as we know, and that leading to human thought and fancying a McDonald’s Big Mac Meal tonight? Got it? Me neither. I can’t get past the beginning let alone anything that it gave rise to.
Let’s try something else. Imagine the UK being the first country in the world to establish universal health care for all and a Conservative government coming along and privatising the NHS in the most sneaky, underhand, way whilst pretending they are not doing any such thing as their corporate mates rake in all the public money and profit from the ever growing privatisation of our once great public services and government ministers accept backhander’s as a reward for their betrayal [1].
What a waste of a perfectly good Big Bang. And let’s keep in mind that this is after 3.7 billion years of the evolution of life on Earth.
You’d think there might be some hint of gratitude for the entirely free gift of life that we’ve all been given courtesy of the universe. But no, not a bit of it. At least all the rest of nature’s parasites can be excused which just follow their own nature with not a hint of sentience in the process.
Human ingratitude in an age of mass communication, when we have no excuse for being ignorant, other than not bothering to know or understand, is mind boggling.
Some people are so ignorant they judge other people’s worth by the pigment of their skin. Yes, really. Of course the mainstream media propaganda rags are one of the worst offenders, pumping out racial hatred. [2]
As I type this, it is 6:14 PM, 14th September 2020, right on the leading edge of time, it’s rolling by as I type, second by second. The universe is unfolding at max evolution with each passing second. We live right on the cutting edge of time. This is where it all happens. An inexorable rolling front line for the 4.543 billion years of the Earth’s existence. And we each got on it for the ride because our parents fancied each other and decided to have sex. There are exceptions to that process, some of them violent, but that’s how it works in general.
If I were to choose the over riding thing that seems to dog humanity in general, I’d have to say that it is first and foremost, ingratitude. Everything else follows from that fundamental ingratitude to nature, which human kind are destroying at an alarming rate.
To whoever might be reading this… that you are reading, that you can read, is a marvel of the universe: the life that’s pumping round your body, every part of you is a living breathing unbelievable gift of the universe. If you have never been impressed with yourself, for life’s sake be impressed now, it’s the least you can do for yourself in this completely bonkers world.
Did you know that babies and young children learn in a completely different way to the way we are taught to learn in school. A baby learns intuitively, it learns from exploring the world (nature) through touch, through sensory experience. A baby has no language and doesn’t seek explanations, it is just a 100%, insatiable, bundle of learning. It feeds its own mind intuitively, effortlessly, absorbing life like a sponge. We laughingly and dismissively call such ongoing activity, play.
I am not going to suggest that there is no place for academic, head, learning, It’s vital, but I am going to suggest that we are taught to do that at the expense of intuitive learning, in fact almost everyone reading this will have no understanding of intuitive learning. That which was the entirety of our young learning experience has disappeared like a morning mist, educated out of us at school.
If you want a sure fire way to learn to appreciate life more, touch it. Remember the old tree hugging thing, how it was mocked? It’s really, really good for us [3]. Communing with nature is the same as communing with who and what we are. We are of the same stuff and getting tactile with nature is good for us, mind and body. If you are feeling cut off from life, one major part of that will be, being cut off from nature. As house dwellers we can forget that nature even exists in any meaningful way, especially in cities.
So learning, or relearning, to be connected to life just requires reaching out to it. People who love gardening get it, they’re doing it all the time. They may not fully appreciate just how good it is for them, mind and body, but they’re getting it by doing it, and in that, understanding takes second place, understanding is after the fact. In writing this piece I am only offering an explanation because so many of us have lost it (me too, for much of my life). But that explanation is meaningless without actually doing it. But once doing it, the explanation becomes superfluous to requirements, nature will take over and do all the work. You don’t even have to meet nature half way, nature is the whole deal, just let your inner child loose and see what happens. Of course there is a battle involved with adult you, tell the adult you to shut the fuck up and get stuck in.
KOG. 14 September 2020.
[1] https://www.thenational.scot/news/18255016.revealed-links-conservatives-private-healthcare/
Conspiracy of Kindness 