Learning from the Wisdom of Nature

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Photo Credit: Allen Halas

Feeling less than grateful after the shellacking we’ve endured in 2020? Does counting your blessings leave you with a short list compared to the curses of COVID, our political food fight, economic doldrums, or fate’s uneven distribution of woe on your shoulders?

Well, if you need something to feel thankful for, just take a deep breath. Or drink a glass of clean, cool water. Perhaps take a bite out of crisp apple. Sit by the shore and let the waves decompress your life. Maybe snuggle with your partner, pet or child. All these blessings, and many more, are brought to you by Mother Earth. This intelligent, living, breathing entity we scurry over and treat so poorly, makes you, everyone and everything you behold, and all that you have and do, possible. She is the prime mover, the womb of all that matters, the only physical and existential home our species has ever known.

When we sit for our Thanksgiving meal, bow our heads and speak our gratitude, there will be an invisible presence at the table—the life force. If we pause quietly, we can feel it coursing through our veins, in the rhythmic beating of our hearts and the cadence of our breathing. Looking at loved ones, we see it sparkle in their eyes, hear its energy in their laughter. This mysterious whatever-it-is that innervates our physical forms is, at the most essential level, the same power coursing through the planet, maintaining, via a vast and intricate web, the circle of life. We are embedded in and utterly dependent on this force.

Collectively, considering our species relationship with the planet, we’re a pretty entitlement-laden, ungrateful bunch. Not all. Many who feel a strong affinity for the natural world do their best to protect, preserve and enhance the well-being of the Earth. But, as evidenced by the climate and pollution crises, not enough of us follow suit. This widespread indifference toward the planet’s health exhibited by individuals, industries and governments is running up against more than Al Gore’s “inconvenient truth.” It is ramming into a stark reality about our relationship with the natural world. All delusions to the contrary, the Earth is not here for our benefit.

The Rhythms of Our Lives

Across decades of wilderness treks, it is crystal clear to me that nature is neutral. It’s not for us, and it’s not against us. It simply is. If we play by its rules, learn from its wisdom, and harmonize the rhythms of our lives with its cadences, we can survive, if not flourish. However, if, in our hubris, we delude ourselves into believing we know more than the planet, that it will bend to our wills, that technology can save us from whatever damage we inflict, then Homo sapiens will find oblivion down the one-way street of extinction.

At a basic psychological level, it is the absence of existential gratitude toward the Earth, or what Native Americans call our “first mother,” that drives our trashing of the natural world. Every time I bend down to retrieve some plastic litter on a hiking trail, read about a rollback of a vital environmental safeguard, or watch business or political power brokers put profits over stewardship of the planet, I see this ingratitude in action. And, should it persist, it will be our utter undoing. 

Like most psychotherapists, I’m not a huge fan of the word “should.” But there are exceptions. We should be deeply grateful to Mother Earth, and we should express that gratitude in daily actions and decisions that support her. We should expect our elected officials to join us in these efforts, and, if they decline, we should throw their me-myself-and-mine asses out of office. We should expect business and industry to be good environmental stewards, and, if they refuse, we should starve them of our money.

When it comes to Mother Earth, it is well past time for merely giving thanks. It’s time for giving back.

For more, visit philipchard.com.