Tag: nature

The Constancy of Nature

It is something of a snickering stereotype among the younger generation. As people get older, their energy often turns more deliberately to pursuits in nature.

I figure there are a bunch of reasons for that. It could be the happy result of having vanquished internal demons and accomplished important life goals. So they get to choose to do what they enjoy doing.

Some may see a turn toward nature in later life as a giving up on society and withdrawing from the world. Maybe. But I prefer to see it as a symptom of acquired wisdom.

All of the important lessons we learn in life are internal. Even if there appear to be others involved. They are merely triggers and tests in human form.

So whether your “opponents” are parents or lovers or children or colleagues or random members of your community, they all have something to teach you.

They won’t necessarily teach you lessons you want to learn. But in my experience, that was never really up to me.

I had to keep taking tests until I passed them. I am hard at work studying for the next one that comes up. As long as we live, they never end.

Another reason I think we start to turn toward nature and natural things is the certainty of it. Put seeds in good earth, water them and they will grow. Either to nourish us as in food or to delight us as in the beauty and form of flowers or shade from a towering tree.

My Aunt Anne wanted to die in an apple orchard. I regret that I was too young and didn’t have the power to make that happen for her. She simply wanted to sit amongst the bounty and take it in the fragrance and beauty of the apples.

I get it. I am feeling a similar pull towards nature though my death is not imminent (as far as I know.) I am feeling a need for simplicity and certitude. There are no great acts of nature that most of us can’t prepare for. Even at her most furious, the cycles of nature are fairly predictable.

We don’t know for sure if the seeds will germinate and grow. We anxiously try to control the conditions for growth with various levels of success. We don’t know when death will put an end to our earthly progress.

But we all know the rules.

Farmers had a deep understanding of nature’s cycles and needs. They lived with those rules. As our lives in the twentieth century moved out of the countryside and into the cities, the rules of living started to change.

The rules of nature did not. We live in a world today where the rules are under constant attack. We are trying to live longer. We are trying to hang on to youth and beauty by more and more extreme methods.

Many people today are painfully self-absorbed. They are drifting farther and farther away from the basics of living. And we are paying the price.

So cleaving closer to nature makes sense to me. It checks a lot of boxes for creating happiness.

I like the puttering, the decision-making, the time in the sun and praying for rain. Time in nature gives me a sense of peace, groundedness and a connection to something greater.

That has a whole lot more appeal to me as a way of being than the artifice of navigating tricky social situations, and workplace politics. It always did.

So maybe it is age that brings on a deeper appreciation for all things in nature. But I think it is simpler than that.

We are – if you buy into the biblical description – made from dust and to dust we will return. Which is as about as simple an explanation of the origins of life as I can come up with.

I will leave a more complex analysis of why and how we got here to younger and more nimble intellects. As for me, I’ll plan to head back to the garden with a cup of tea and uncluttered mind.

Who Knew Department

This may be something. It may be nothing.

When I find something that makes sense to me, I want to try it and I want to share it. And I will.

So here is something about bay leaves that I never knew. Now I do. And so do you.

Did you know this? I didn’t know either:

Many women add bay leaf to their foods, especially on red meat and wild game meat.

Without knowing the reason for adding bay leaves to food, when you ask a woman why, she tells you: to add taste and flavor to the food.

This is wrong because if you boil bay leaves in a cup of water and taste them, you won’t find any taste .

Why do you put bay leaves on meat?

Adding bay leaves to meat converts triglycerides to less fat to test and confirm this.

Cut one chicken in half and cook each half in a pot, put one bay leaf and the second without the bay leaf, and note the amount of fat in the two pots.

Helps to get rid of many health problems and dangerous diseases

Among the benefits of bay leaf:

Bay leaf cures digestive disorders and bay leaf helps to get rid of bloating.

Heartburn.

Acidity.

Constipation.

Antibiotic.

Anti-parasitic.

Digestivo.

Stimulators.

Sedative.

Regulate bowel movement by drinking hot tea.

It lowers blood sugar and bay leaf is an antioxidant.

It allows the body to produce insulin by eating it in food or drinking bay tea for a month.

Eliminates harmful cholesterol and frees the body of triglycerides.

It is very useful in treating colds, flu and severe cough, because it is a rich source of vitamin C. You can boil the leaves and inhale the steam to eliminate the cough and reduce the severity of the cough.

Bay leaf protects the heart from attacks and also protects against strokes because it contains compounds that protect the heart and blood vessels.

Rich in acids such as caffeic acid, quercetin, egonol and parthenolids, which are substances that prevent cancer cells from forming in the body.

Eliminates insomnia and anxiety if taken before bed, and helps you relax and sleep peacefully.

Drinking a cup of boiled bay twice a day melts kidney stones and cures infections.

Perchance to Dream

It is rather brilliant how we keep the harsher realities of life at arm’s-length as we go about our day-to-day lives.

Death occurs around us all the time. It is happening somewhere right now to someone we don’t even remotely know and now never will. We rarely feel death’s bite until it is up close and personal. When someone in our family dies, or in our circle, however, the hole left in our own little world is palpable and vast.

Whether suddenly or after a long illness, the transition from interacting with a thinking, breathing individual to internalizing their utter absence is wrenching. It can stir up all manner of emotional reactions and invite you into a period of self-reflection. If you’re lucky.

Starting out in life, mostly we are lucky enough to ignore all of that. As young people struggling to find their feet and make their own lives, the primary focus in early adulthood is on building an education and career and home and family. Not for everybody, especially these days, but for many.

In his book, The Myth of Normal, author, physician and public speaker Gabor Mate challenges the collective concept of “normalcy.” He challenges our notions of what currently passes as “normal” in our physical and psychological lives in the Western world.

Instead, Mate says, our culture and the institutions it has created, are founded on very unhealthy and unstable ground. We have built most of our health and support systems focused on intervention and not on prevention.

In this sense, our society has built responses based largely on reactive and superficial markers. Doctors rarely have time to dig deep enough into a person’s history and social/emotional context to gather information about conditions that might underly and caused their illness.

Mate asserts that personal and cultural trauma contributes significantly to all health problems – both physical and psychological — and the physical and psychological cannot be fully separated from one another.

I could not agree more. It is life’s inequalities and access to opportunities that shape us. Also – as Mate explains – we are all defined for better or worse by the circumstances of our birth and the family we are born into. The continuum is widely divergent.

We paint over the divergence from our personal experience of “normalcy” with stories or rationalizations. Our co-created narrative attempts to explain away why our “normal” family is somehow legitimately different or unique or better than or less than others.

In our family, my mother dictated the value of accomplishment above almost everything. My father saw value in great wealth. While these were their espoused values, their reality was markedly different.

Ongoing struggles in both parents with addiction and self-esteem. Inter-personal violence. Destructive power struggles between my mother and father as they sought to prove superiority over the other.

So we had a house. And cars. And my parent’s had careers. And a marriage. And social standing. Until, one day, suddenly, they didn’t.

It is hard to grieve the death of a way of life. I look back now on how radically and permanently my life changed when my parents split up and we left the town I was born in. It would be rare for a child to make sense of what was happening to them in a traumatic environment at the moment. Children’s primary job is to survive and grow. Making sense of how they did that must come later.

I think of this when I reflect on the Ukraine or Gaza. The reality they are living through – the children in particular – will become their memory of ”normal” up the road. Yet we all seem to proceed with the expectation that to succeed in life, the survivors must simply put the past behind them, step up to do what must be done to make a life and integrate themselves as productive and “normal” citizens.

We do ourselves no favors by ignoring death’s reality and eventuality around us and for us. Traditional farmers seemed to have a better handle on this than city folk. The cycles of birth and death can be daily occurrences in lives lived close to the land.

Collectively, we are all “whistling past the graveyard.” So the trick is not necessarily to focus on death and its certainty while we are living our lives. But we shouldn’t discount it either.

Poet Mary Oliver dealt with an abusive childhood background by turning her focus to nature and exploring her own sense of wonder. It is available to all of us if we but look. We all need to figure out what Oliver famously asked of us: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” 

Answering that question for yourself and living it out is the rebuttal you will draw on when facing your own death. It will also allow you to create your own personal and unique sense of “normalcy,” and not one imposed on you by others.

It’s in you, believe me. All you have to do is find the courage and character to act on it. That is what I tell myself anyway and, for the most part, it is working.

Dear Abby

From the Facebook Wisdom of Life Community

This query from an overwhelmed Mom popped up on this Facebook group I belong to. My answer to this writer’s call for help generated positive feedback on that site. I thought it might be worth sharing. (The inquiry is anonymous so I am fairly sure I haven’t breached any ethical boundaries.)

Not so long ago, I could have written a similarly themed post. On the other side of those dark days now, I wanted to share insights with her that helped me. Healing deep emotional damage is a marathon, not a sprint.

In my answer, I borrow shamelessly from the advice column stylings of Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren. They were sisters who doled out daily nuggets of hope in “advice” columns published back in the middle to late 20th century in newspapers across North America.

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Writer: I am suffering from severe treatment-resistant depression and anxiety. I am in the middle of tapering off Valium and having an extremely hard time getting off of it. I’m in a loveless relationship for 20 years with four kids. I have no job or career and nothing to call my own except for being a mom. I’m scared, lost, and have no support system. My dad died in September and I was disowned by my mom and family so I only have one sister left. I’ve spent my life caring for others and not being cared for myself. I’m in a deep dark hole with no way out. Nowhere to turn. Can’t sleep. Can barely function. And very moody. My only time to myself is when the kids are in school but soon they will be home all summer and I don’t think I can handle it with the way I feel. I just need someone to love and support me. And I don’t have that. How do I navigate my way through this?

Answer from Margot Brewer: I have been where you are (but with two kids). Identifying your misery is a healthy start. That may sound contradictory but it isn’t. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. You have to start learning to love yourself and truly believe you are worthy of love. You have lived without love in your marriage for a long time. When you have a long history of want, it is hard to conceive of another way of being. You have a lot of healing to do. Losing your Dad and your family are massive losses that need to be acknowledged and grieved. I lived through that, including the estrangement from the family. Be ever so gentle and compassionate with yourself. Look around your life and decide what you can and cannot control. Find something in your world every day to be grateful for. Make a gratitude jar. This may seem flaky. I get that. Do it anyway. And start taking extra special care of yourself every day. Carve out space in your downtime to do things that make you happy. Music, books, nature, gardening. Anything that gives you even slivers of joy and gets you outside yourself. It is a long road to get out from underneath the weight of your life but you can by holding on to the belief it can change. I still take some medication for occasional relief but it is only part of my self-care routine, not all of it. Thank you for your post. I hope you find the strength and belief in yourself to feel better. It may take a while but the journey is worth it. Take good care of yourself.