Chapter 4: Appreciate Nature
Nature is all around you and it is beautiful. Nature offers you a free show every day. Learn to watch the show and appreciate it. You will be filled with awe more often than not.
The stars are perhaps the most spellbinding elements of Nature. Take some time to stargaze. Appreciate the way that the stars twinkle. Appreciate the random constellations that they form. Make up some constellations of your own. Appreciate that many of the stars we see now are in fact dead, and that the true picture of the sky is unknown. What a great mystery. Appreciate that you got to see the radiance of these stars before they died. They got to be a part of your life, even when they are no more.
Appreciate the rain. Appreciate its soothing pitter patter. Appreciate its clean scent. If you live in the desert, you can appreciate the scent of rain even more than those that live in other climates. Appreciate how rain nourishes the Earth and gives life to the greenery around you and the food that you eat.
Also appreciate the snow. Appreciate its fluffy coldness and how it transforms the world around you into a snowy winter wonderland. It can change the shape of buildings and trees and the land itself as it makes drifts. It serves as a canvas for snow angels and as a material for making snowballs. You can even make sno-cones or molasses candy with it! Appreciate the fun that snow offers for sports like skiing and sledding. Appreciate how snow days used to be Heaven for you as a kid, and is or will be Heaven for your kids as well.
Appreciate rainbows. The simple science of a sun ray refracting into all the colors of the spectrum on the prism of raindrops creates beautiful spectacles. Appreciate the fact that you can never reach the true end of a rainbow.
Appreciate the sun and the way it feeds the plants around you without even trying. Appreciate the bursts of color the sun makes when it sets and rises. Appreciate how the sky transforms and you can see the stars and the moon once the sun gives up its reign over the sky for the night.
Appreciate the feeling of the air on your skin as you jog or as you power walk to your next destination. The cool breeze or the hot, muggy air always has a unique quality to it. Every climate is different. We get so used to living in our particular climate that we forget to feel it in its full splendor.
The feeling of water on your hands and on your skin in the shower, or when you wash your hands, is unique. Nothing feels quite like water. Other liquids or sticky or toxic or feel heavier than water. Appreciate its unique, life-giving qualities and its special texture.
Appreciate even the ground under your feet as you walk to the grocery store or work. The solidness of the ground is something reassuring and easily taken for granted. Take a moment to really feel this solidness, and to appreciate it for being the one sure things that you have always relied on. Sometimes the earth does collapse or an earthquake turns it to dubious solidity, but usually the earth is always there, solid beneath your feet, holding you up.
Appreciate gravity. This may seem so silly. But Earth’s gravity is perfect. It is preventing you from floating up into space and freezing to death as you drift into nothingness, and it is keeping you from tumbling down to the ground, unable to breathe as the atmosphere crushes you.
On any other planet, you would not be able to survive. The particular chemical cocktail of our atmosphere and the level of gravity and the heat we get from the sun makes Earth inhabitable for you. Appreciate this.
Appreciate flowers. They are beautiful. They smell sweet. They add bursts of color to yards and walkways, and they grace Nature with unabashed, brilliant beauty. Because of flowers, bees and other pollinators are able to eat, and keep foods like avocados and mangos on your table. They also keep plants alive, which enable you to breathe the right level of oxygen. Flowers play a more major role in your life than you realize.
You should also appreciate animals, and the birds and the bees. The fragile ecosystems of the world sustain you. Your pets love you and keep you from feeling alone sometimes. Animals are your fellow souls. They come in all shapes and sizes. They share the earth with you and provide you with food, pets, and amusement. Your survival is dependent upon them in some way or another.
Appreciate the ocean. The way it smells, the sound of the waves caressing or even striking the beach. Appreciate the vast depths of the ocean that we have not been able to reach even with sonar, and appreciate the secrets and mysteries that these depths must hold. Appreciate sea creatures, funny looking as they are, and the yummy seafood that the ocean yields for humans to eat. Appreciate how the ocean catches fire with the colors of the sunset or sunrise, and how it turns amethyst or black with nightfall. Appreciate how it caresses you, and how salty it tastes when you accidentally swallow some of its brine.
The exotic animals that you see at the zoo are bizarre and beautiful. They are unlike you have ever seen in your environment. Appreciate them. Appreciate that they grace this Earth and that they are here for your viewing pleasure. Take a stroll through the zoo for no reason except to enjoy all the mysterious, amazing, and inexplicable things that Nature has to offer. Whatever you believe in. creation or evolution, you should find this spectacle awe-inspiring.
Appreciate the birds and their songs. Appreciate how they toil to build nests that balance perfectly in tree branches. Appreciate how they can fly effortlessly, and how they teach their babies to fly too.
Appreciate how predators like owls and hawks can spot tiny prey in the grass. Appreciate how woodpeckers can hear worms tunneling in tree bark. These animals have very fine senses that enable them to provide population control for many species. They are essential links in the food cycle.
Appreciate the changing of the seasons. Just as you start to get tired of the weather of one season, another comes around to relieve you. The spring builds you up with excitement for the fun of the summer, like playing in the pool and floating on the river. Meanwhile the fall builds you up for the excitement of trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins, building snowmen and staying in by the fire or woodstove with hot tea or cocoa. Through the seasons, you watch the tree foliage and the garden plants change. You witness the migration of birds and butterflies as they head south and then north. Every year, the cycle is the same, yet you experience it through new eyes. As you mature and change, you enter each year and go through the seasons just a little bit different and a little bit the same. The cycle of the seasons never grows old.
Appreciate the very cycle of life. For every death, there is also birth. In Nature and in your home life, youth and old age form an endless cycle of give and take. A balance is always struck between loss and gain. While this cycle can be bittersweet and even painful, it is also necessary for life. Appreciate how it keeps populations balanced and gives new people the gift of life and old people the gift of experience and wisdom.