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This is the same flower, both photographs taken within seconds. One a study in elegantly controlled geometry, the other a seemingly wild expression of unfurling ecstasy.
It was pointed out to me recently that when I’m thinking I don’t look happy. This wasn’t news, I’ve heard it before. Although aware it happens, I’ve not yet been able to prevent it. So it goes with contrast between impressions we make, and those we perceive.
Last week some friends and I had a fun time walking with a “plawking group.” A retired friend — who put in a career with the EPA (doing invaluable work to keep us and our precious Earth healthy, work that’s now being demonized as over-burdensome and “expendable”) — has helped organize a regular informal gaggle of local do-gooders. They go around collecting trash off neighborhood sidewalks and street edges. To his great credit, he makes it fun, bringing along his beagle pup, welcoming kids, and it’s as convenient as possible, as he supplies trash bags, gloves, and even several sets of “grabbers” or plawkers.
We’ve likely all seen folks in orange garb on highways doing this, usually with a rifle toting overseer. That always leaves an impression on me, much as I don’t know the reasons these people were incarcerated or committed to “community service” it somehow harkens a vague sense of chain gangs and righteousness.
So conversing and walking with friends (and former strangers who then become friends) in a shared task of helping temporarily clean-up a slice of our city modified some of those feelings. Plus it’s great to accomplish a small bit of beautification. I’m also aware it’s been documented that when a neighborhood appears clean, it tends to be self-promoting in lessening the amount of litter mindlessly tossed.
Another friend was considering joining us but declined, admitting he was burned out on picking up trash. For years he dutifully volunteered as a Trail Maintainer on the Appalachian Trail, a constant job in need of helpers. Embarrassingly, until he described his efforts, despite my years of hiking I never even realized the amount of work and effort required to enable the rest of us to have a pleasant hike! So in between hauling chainsaws, gas, all manner of heavy tools and equipment, food and water (sometimes several miles before even beginning the work of say, cutting and re-laying stone steps or clearing fallen trees, on a regular basis, he and others would collect bagfuls of “city trash” ignorantly dropped by hikers. For sure, many of us have had a gorgeous outdoor scene scarred by plastic chip bags or bottles screaming for our attention.
How we see affects what we see, even our selves. For all of us, as a good friend who’s a massage therapist told me years ago, “stress manifests in the flesh.” We can read it on our faces, in our bodies, even in how we walk and move.
I have a dear friend under a lot of pressure to hold things together in her very full life, obliged to juggle parenting, work, her health and several other balls at once. Regrettably, I’ve heard self-deprecating comments; understandably they’re a self-conscious coping mechanism. Happily, recently a few of us have made room to go out together. So it was especially sweet the other night when I sat across from her, to recognize how radiant she looked, in a way that clearly revealed she’d been able to let go of just a bit of the weight she’s been carrying.
I read recently studies have begun to be able to measure the impact of humans hugging trees — often mentioned for its impact on our health, but now we have technology that’s begun to be able document the positive impact on the trees that were hugged by humans for several weeks! It boggles my mind (and at times pains me) to consider what we have been missing in our relationships with the more-than-human world.
What our culture has focused upon is what has contributed to the current state of this world, and what we give our attention to now will help define the world we offer to life beyond us.
The challenge of course, like my own pensive look, is to be aware. Of the wonders large and tiny in this world, and of our selves. And importantly, in a deeper, communal way, to have sincere friends who will honestly and compassionately share with us the impressions we make upon them. Not surface judgments of us that don’t matter, but in the sense that we can learn from what others are receiving from us.
Especially, owning the self-fulfilling impact of this miraculous embodiment of being that we are — and that how we radiate and what we take in are both intimately interconnected with all else, in a continuous reciprocal exchange.
See the incredible beauty we are and life is, and be the beauty we wish to see.
It was pointed out to me recently that when I’m thinking I don’t look happy. This wasn’t news, I’ve heard it before. Although aware it happens, I’ve not yet been able to prevent it. So it goes with contrast between impressions we make, and those we perceive.
Last week some friends and I had a fun time walking with a “plawking group.” A retired friend — who put in a career with the EPA (doing invaluable work to keep us and our precious Earth healthy, work that’s now being demonized as over-burdensome and “expendable”) — has helped organize a regular informal gaggle of local do-gooders. They go around collecting trash off neighborhood sidewalks and street edges. To his great credit, he makes it fun, bringing along his beagle pup, welcoming kids, and it’s as convenient as possible, as he supplies trash bags, gloves, and even several sets of “grabbers” or plawkers.
We’ve likely all seen folks in orange garb on highways doing this, usually with a rifle toting overseer. That always leaves an impression on me, much as I don’t know the reasons these people were incarcerated or committed to “community service” it somehow harkens a vague sense of chain gangs and righteousness.
So conversing and walking with friends (and former strangers who then become friends) in a shared task of helping temporarily clean-up a slice of our city modified some of those feelings. Plus it’s great to accomplish a small bit of beautification. I’m also aware it’s been documented that when a neighborhood appears clean, it tends to be self-promoting in lessening the amount of litter mindlessly tossed.
Another friend was considering joining us but declined, admitting he was burned out on picking up trash. For years he dutifully volunteered as a Trail Maintainer on the Appalachian Trail, a constant job in need of helpers. Embarrassingly, until he described his efforts, despite my years of hiking I never even realized the amount of work and effort required to enable the rest of us to have a pleasant hike! So in between hauling chainsaws, gas, all manner of heavy tools and equipment, food and water (sometimes several miles before even beginning the work of say, cutting and re-laying stone steps or clearing fallen trees, on a regular basis, he and others would collect bagfuls of “city trash” ignorantly dropped by hikers. For sure, many of us have had a gorgeous outdoor scene scarred by plastic chip bags or bottles screaming for our attention.
How we see affects what we see, even our selves. For all of us, as a good friend who’s a massage therapist told me years ago, “stress manifests in the flesh.” We can read it on our faces, in our bodies, even in how we walk and move.
I have a dear friend under a lot of pressure to hold things together in her very full life, obliged to juggle parenting, work, her health and several other balls at once. Regrettably, I’ve heard self-deprecating comments; understandably they’re a self-conscious coping mechanism. Happily, recently a few of us have made room to go out together. So it was especially sweet the other night when I sat across from her, to recognize how radiant she looked, in a way that clearly revealed she’d been able to let go of just a bit of the weight she’s been carrying.
I read recently studies have begun to be able to measure the impact of humans hugging trees — often mentioned for its impact on our health, but now we have technology that’s begun to be able document the positive impact on the trees that were hugged by humans for several weeks! It boggles my mind (and at times pains me) to consider what we have been missing in our relationships with the more-than-human world.
What our culture has focused upon is what has contributed to the current state of this world, and what we give our attention to now will help define the world we offer to life beyond us.
The challenge of course, like my own pensive look, is to be aware. Of the wonders large and tiny in this world, and of our selves. And importantly, in a deeper, communal way, to have sincere friends who will honestly and compassionately share with us the impressions we make upon them. Not surface judgments of us that don’t matter, but in the sense that we can learn from what others are receiving from us.
Especially, owning the self-fulfilling impact of this miraculous embodiment of being that we are — and that how we radiate and what we take in are both intimately interconnected with all else, in a continuous reciprocal exchange.
See the incredible beauty we are and life is, and be the beauty we wish to see.
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