Feel like your brain was built for simpler times? Sometimes the 21st century seems a little too much: too much pressure, too much speed, too much technology, too much information. At these times, I like to escape to a place where my brain feels more at home.
In nature I don’t have to prove I am not a robot. The trees don’t demand a username and password. The sand doesn’t require two-factor authentication. The sun doesn’t underline all my errors with angry red squiggles or hit me up for a subscription fee.
In nature my nervous system isn’t jolted by pings, dings and pop-ups. My eyes don’t tire from a staring match with a screen. All the tragedies, disasters and problems from beyond the horizon aren’t thrust upon me. There is no advertising for home loans, supplements or funeral insurance. Kookaburras never try to scam me.
In nature my senses are not dulled by the sterility of white painted walls, ceiling tiles and a temperature that never varies from 23 degrees. I am not sedentary, sentenced to hour upon hour of stationery accomplishment.
When I escape the office everything changes. Wafts of jasmine and frangipani fill my nostrils and tickle my brain. Cicadas create a pulse in keeping with my own. Rainbow lorikeets drunk on nectar joyfully act out scenes from Star Wars, darting past my face like brilliantly coloured X-wings.
Diving into the ocean provides a portal to a different world; a simpler one; one where I can just be me and not a servant to some ‘to-do’ list. I am present. I am part of it. I am awed by it. And if I don’t dive through the next wave, I will be flattened by it.
When we return to nature we return home. It’s a place loved, needed but not visited nearly enough. In nature we dose up on mindfulness, wonder and connectedness. We get what our biology craves; fresh air in our lungs, sun on our skin and the rowdy shrieks of cockatoos in our ears to remind us we are alive.
In nature we discover that we are more than just a marketing target at the end of an algorithm. The possums don’t want our money. The echidnas don’t want out vote. The wallabies aren’t asking us to like, share or comment.
They are simply being… and they are really good at it.
With a little more time in nature we could learn a lot from them.