Tag: Health

The Joys of Walking: National Walking Day Reflections

Happy National Walking Day

I was pleasantly surprised to know that today (the first Wednesday of April) is National Walking Day sponsored by the American Heart Association.

Regular readers, friends and family know the walking fetish I have. 

There are a number of things I am teased for in the household, but nature walking has to take the cake. “You do realize that you can achieve a lot more if you just walked less and talked less too, right?” is a common refrain.

I have to agree, but I seem to think that without walking, there is just time at home in which a myriad different things show up as tasks to be done. I mean review this:

The kitchen needs scrubbing, the snacks need eating, the clothes need folding, the food needs cooking, the cook-grill needs cleaning, and the dust needs dusting.

Out in Nature Though

Whereas out on a walk, the geese don’t need prodding to squawk, the mallard ducks don’t need encouragement to fly and land with a splash in the waters, the suns rays don’t need reminding to spatter and scatter a myriad different colors into the perfectly placed clouds in the horizon as it sets, the lavender and eucalyptus don’t need reminding to waft their aromas into the atmosphere. It is all there for the taking.

 It is the sacred act of you and yourself out walking. Just the mind taking some time to rejuvenate with fresh air, slowly dissipating the tensions of the day into the evening air, letting nature do its work, and the body healing and strengthening itself.

Once my newsfeed told me about today being National Walking Day, the old soul yearned for the outdoors. So, after the day’s meetings were done, I swished outside. Everything was as perfect as ever. The perfectly positioned clouds, the sun’s rays just right – not too feeble nor too sharp, the flowers of spring all gloriously waving their blooms to the mild breeze, and the rain-washed Earth looking clean, welcoming and habitable.

I was walking by the waterside, and the calm strength of the waters nourished me. Ducks, geese and a pelican or two gracefully glided on the waters. I have often wondered about the sentience of our fellow beings. Do they stop to admire a sunset like some of us do? They are definitely more attuned to nature around us than we are. An unkindness of ravens (or was it a murder of crows?) were loudly cawing overhead. 

Shinrin Yoku or Forest Bathing

The Japanese have a practice built around spending time outdoors – specifically longer periods amidst trees and forests – it is called Shinrin Roku – or Forest Bathing. What a marvelous concept?

“Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better!” – Albert Einstein

Happy Walking Day to all of you. Please step outside and enjoy the beautiful Earth even if only for a few minutes today.

13 miles while 13 years old!

The Weight Charts

The last time I took the son for his annual health checkup, the doctor seemed to give me a look as if to say, “Have you tried giving him more high calorie foods?” The children have always been on the lower end of the weight charts – sometimes barely clinging on, other times falling off the charts altogether, especially when they have a growth spurt with their height. So, this is a familiar enough scene. I braced myself, and told the doctor about how he seems to be eating well enough, seems to enjoy his food, and eats more than me etc. He wasn’t impressed and asked the son to eat more and be back in two months time. 

This was about a year ago. Also coinciding with a time the old mother was here a-visiting. A grandmother being a g.m., and all that – she was plying her grandchildren with ‘good food’ and this wasn’t having the effect it needed to have. Nevertheless, a watered down version of the doctor’s regimen were relayed to her, and she fed him more ‘good food’ to get him on the weight scale. 

Diets & Grandmothers

Around the same time, the husband had decided to go on a strict diet – a no-carb diet, which in a household filled with South Indian grandparents and grandchildren who love their food, can be a carbolicious nightmare. The mother would periodically cast doubts on what sort of husband I was raising if I wasn’t cooking him what he wanted.”We raise children, not husbands!” was poorly received. 

Yours Truly was on a low-carb version, having realized the futility of cooking and nutrition in this household, and merely settling for the occasional serving of quinoa instead of white rice when possible. 

So there we are: I hope I’ve painted a nice cozy domestic scene for you. The mother, able to chastise me and wonder how my husband was eating, how my son was eating, how my parents were eating, how my nephews were eating. The daughter and I, the low maintenance ones, reveling in the glorious sort of peace that comes with being forgotten. 

13 miles while 13 years old!

Anyway, it was a few months later, that the son said he wanted to run a half-marathon when he was still 13 years old. “13 miles at 13 years – that’s cool, right?”

I nodded, taking in his reedy body. He could build stamina, weight would still be a problem, but it already was. So, we said yes and started training together. The son and I,  running our ways through the emerging springtime. It was a beautiful time to train. The cherry blossoms, the crisp rain-washed earth, the beautiful skies and green hills around us all proved to be a wonderful backdrop to our runs. It was tough going given the demands on our time, and a full school schedule in session. But we managed it.

Yesterday, we finished the Oakland Half Marathon together. 

Well, not together.  The son was, of course, far faster than Yours Truly, but as the daughter kindly put it, “Aww! Good job Amma. I am proud of you. You can’t help it if you’re old and gave birth to two children!”

His paternal grandmother is here now and is tutting about how little he eats. “Don’t you feed him?” she asked.

I said, “Clearly not as well as you can!” and ducked out of the kitchen looking pleased. I heard her fussing over him with a bowl of something. We had run a half marathon and, sore as we were, it was a wonderful feeling of accomplishment. 

“Paati – I can’t eat anymore. I am already full!” said the son, and I smiled to myself. 

All was well.

Gratitude and Intentions: Welcoming the New Year

Welcoming the New Year

It has long been tradition to welcome the new year. The hope of new beginnings, the ability to reset, taking stock of what needs to be done in the year ahead, what did not work in the year past, is always precious.

This year, I sat in an airport reading the beautiful meditations of Maria Popova on the symbolisms of the new year, and some blessings to begin the year with.  She says in her beautiful essay on new beginnings: 

Some Blessings to Begin with – The Marginalian

“The universe didn’t owe us mountains and music, that we didn’t have to be born, and yet here we are with our physics and our poems and our ever-breaking, ever-broadening hearts.”

  • Maria Popova

I found myself nodding along at her evocative language, and the beautiful blessings she envisions.

Many times in the past, I have had discussions with the children, and nieces, on why I pray or meditate , and what blessings I hope to gain from it. I love having this discussion with them, for they know I am not a particularly religious person: so why do I pray? It also allows me a glimpse into the kind of personalities they wish to become.

Why do I pray?

I tell them I pray so I am able to set my intentions for what I hope to do with this life I am blessed with. Like setting resolutions for who we are becoming.

🐘 When I pray for health, it means, I would be cognizant of what I eat, how I exercise, how to keep my mind and body stimulated and healthy.

🐘 When I pray for prosperity, it means, I will subconsciously work towards a better life – not just for me, but for those around me too –  for when we all have better lives, we all prosper. (granted ‘better’ in itself is a nebulous term, and usually at different epochs in our lives, they mean different things) 

🐘 When I pray for continued success, it means I will work towards having goals, and try to cultivate the motivation and discipline required to achieve them. 

🐘 When I pray for good relationships, it means I would subconsciously avoid conflicts over little things, and work towards harmonious relationships. 

When I pray for….you get the gist. 

Do the same things then hold for blessings too?

I wonder. 

For some blessings can only be recognized as such after the fact.

image

What are the blessings I am grateful for?

I am grateful for the blessing of life, the fragile conditions that allow us to thrive on this tiny blue planet, the people in our lives who are crucial to our happiness, the microbes and bacteria that all do their part in keeping us functioning, the interconnectedness of the universe that enables the web of rapture to continue, the curiosities of our natures that help us continually improve and problem solve, the conditions of peace-time, the opportunities, the ability to find joy in our lives, the abundance of flora and fauna on this marvelous planet, and so much more.

So what are the blessings you are grateful for, and will they translate into prayers or resolutions for you?

Elevating Resolutions for the New Year Inspired by Some of Humanity’s Greatest Minds – The Marginalian

The Oldest Trick in the Book

Flittable Flipperbits

It was one of those days when I felt speed and productivity were playing a cruel joke on me. It bonked me from chore to meeting to event to missed messages, and by the end of it all, I had a vague sense of all the things that didn’t feel quite right because the important had been muddled in with the unending stream of the banal.

In all the melee of rushing about the day, I realized that I had missed an important piece of communication, which, had I picked up at the right time might have saved me about two hours of turmoil, but there you are. 

Later that night, I felt foggy. Nebulous clouds, misty and mysterious as they seemed, I knew I needed to sit and stew for a bit for them to take shape. But then, of course I was too stimulated to do that – flittable flipperbits!  I marveled yet again at the highly energetic, always-on-top-of-things folks we meet in our daily lives. They sparkle with busyness, and seem to be happy about it too. I felt that strange longing to be like them just for a day perhaps! 

By the end of the day, the world seemed to laugh at me, and I had no choice but to join in. So, I did. 

The husband gave me a curious look and said, “Well – you just did get a day like that, and you seemed to have managed pretty well – you were busier than you wanted to be – a day filled with things to do, and jobs to get done, buzzing about. You seem to have missed out on some important things, but you took care of them. And you seem to be laughing at the end of it, so what’s wrong?”

I gave the poor fellow a look that I usually reserved for poorly cooked cabbages, said he wouldn’t understand, and swished off to bed. I felt like a cooked cabbage myself, how was that any good? 

Dreamy Strawberries

It was all made clear to me the next morning when I awoke from what seemed to be one of the strangest dreams that even I have had in a while. It involved marriage halls with catchy music, social situations that I fervently hope and pray I shall never find myself in, and feeling like I was run over by a truck that had strawberries in them with flowing taps of chocolate (but not dark chocolate – for some reason, this seemed like an important thing for the brain to remember the next day) 

So I decided to meditate today – the diagnosis was clear: this was an over-wrought brain. Nothing else. I shall meditate and all shall be well. By the time things pick up in a few hours, I shall have the world in control again, I said, and sat down to it. The oldest trick in the book really, but the most effective.

How did we muddle it all up?

I thought of all my wonderful yoga and meditation teachers, and invoked their calming voices. They floated up, and did their job, and I spent the next few minutes thinking about a conversation I had with my friend – who is a poetic soul brimming with love, and we had chuckled about it. How the world of remuneration is all inverted. The ones who really should be the best compensated are the ones who teach us to spend time with ourselves, taking what is available and trying to help us shape ourselves into something far more beautiful – our teachers, coaches, mentors, yoga, art and meditation teachers – and yet, the world has somehow played a cruel joke by compensating those who make the very algorithms and enable the lifestyles requiring these things to dance to the bank, and not the other way around.

I thought, I’d share this video though – for it says a lot of what I’d like to say – only a lot more cogently:

Rory Sutherland – Are We Now Too Impatient to Be Intelligent? | Nudgestock 2024

“Let’s let go of all stray thoughts – acknowledge them, but tell them, you’ll come to it.” said my meditation teacher’s voice in my brain – forgiving yet insistent, and I chuckled. How did she know where I had gone off to – even when I was only bringing her up as a figment of my imagination?

Meditation done, I felt like I could begin the dance of a new day with fresh energy, and rather looked forward to seeing how I would muddle it all up again. Somehow, that felt right.

Exploring Happiness: Is It in Our Genes?

In what was an intriguing chat with the son last evening, we poked around the ethics of genetic modification. Apparently, that had been an area of discussion in their classroom, and the son was keen – the novelty of a discussion with multiple viewpoints at that age is amazing. I smiled and listened to him talk offering a question here, a hum there, an insight elsewhere.

“What do you want to do with human-beings if we are smarter?” I asked him.

“We could fly.”

“Cool! But then what?”

I took a deep breath and said as casually as I could. “Everyone wants to be smarter, for things to come more easily to them. So we wouldn’t have to spend so much time figuring things out. But – the thing is, if everything came easily, we would not know what to do with all the time we have on our hands. What do they say? An empty mind is a devil’s workshop? I don’t know – I think it could lead to more mental health issues – what do you think?”

He pondered this for a while, and said it was an intriguing thought. 

Who Survives?

It reminded me of another chat the husband and I had a few months ago – on the larger theme of the future of humanity. With smarter, faster, stronger, what would happen to humans? The husband took a moment to gather his thoughts, and said, “Well – it will come back to good old basics then, wouldn’t it? Survival of the fittest. Those humans who can learn to be peaceful with themselves will ultimately win out – that is the strain that will survive.”

I was impressed – yes, no matter what we had, it ultimately came down to temperament, attitude, and the ability to be happy, didn’t it?

Generosity by Richard Powers: The Happiness Gene

Incidentally the book I am currently reading: Generosity by Richard Powers, talks about a variation of this: The Happiness Gene.

The story tries to figure out the reason for Thassa’s happiness. Thassadit Amswar is a refugee who has fled the Algiers region. Her brother is still under house arrest in a totalitarian regime, her parents are dead after years in which they were stuck in the midst of a civil war that raged around them, and any which way you look at it, she should be morose, sad – not chirpy, cheerful, and full of light.

The whole set up reminded me of one of Rumi’s sayings that have been making its way around the instagram world: something to the effect of:

When the world around you is dark, you could very well be the light.

Rumi

In any case, somehow Thassa’s ability to be happy attracts attention – first from local friends, then a policeman, a local news report diagnoses her as having ‘Hyperthymia’ – a condition of overwhelming happiness, and goes on to attract those who want to auction and buy her eggs, decode her DNA, figure out the happiness gene. She finds herself unmoored by how people feel bad because she is happy, and having to navigate the horrors of fame.

In Essence

  • Is there a genetic component to being happy?
  • If so, can that be picked and chosen for our offspring in the not-so-distant future?
  • What issues would that create for mankind? For just as sure as we are of creating solutions, so too can we be sure for creating problems for ourselves, isn’t it?

Embracing Summer: From Scorcher to Serenity

Hot , Hotter,  Hotter Still …

One hot summer’s day, I tried turning on all the car’s air conditioning vents towards myself. It was no use. The sweltering heat was unrelenting. I sipped some water from the water-bottle I’d left in the car a couple of hours earlier, and it felt like very bland tea – warm, but still better than nothing. This is going to be the reality – I thought to myself miserably as I heard the climate doomsday sayers in my head. Every progressive summer heads towards hotter and hotter temperatures. 

Even the phone seemed to be prickly and finicky with the heat – sporadically dropping and picking up the CarPlay. That’s when I noticed the car’s options for nature sounds. I picked Rainy Day – yearnings for a wonderful rainy day even if the drops of water would evaporate the moment they hit the earth that parched day. 

I didn’t expect to feel much – but I was mistaken. We do not really give each of our senses its due in how it makes us feel. My ears pricked up at the sounds of the rain even as the car itself was dry as brush. Maybe it was the effect of the air conditioning kicking in, but everything felt suddenly cooler. I fumbled for my cooling glasses again – I could not wear them because they were too hot earlier, but that made a difference too. 

raindrops

It was miraculous, the transformation from parched to a feeling of summertime abundance. Life felt sweeter. 

SummerTime Sweetness

Watching the flowers sag on the trees, 

Even as the fruit trees are breaking off with the weight of their fruit,

The joy of filling your home with fresh fruits and vegetables from a summer bounty. 

Having friends to share all of this with 

Nurturing the garden 

Watching with amazement as butterflies and bees flit happily.

Indulging in summer activities

Reading great books, 

Having wonderful fellow readers to discuss them with.

The joy of grocery shopping that includes ice cream 🙂 

The abundance of books from the local library 

The night-time adventures with every protagonist and idea sharer

Those are the joys of summertime abundances.

summer-COLLAGE

If listening to rain sounds in the car when the weather outside is blistering can bring out all of the above, we are blessed indeed. What are your summertime sweetness feelings?

“The world smells of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside” – Maud Hart Lovelace on Summer

Elusive Wisdom!

When folks talk about gratitude etc, I suppose they think of the big things in life: good health, good job, good grades, good education, good house to live in etc.

I don’t suppose people have the wisdom to thank their teeth for not hurting. They should. For all of the pesky pains, a toothache takes the biscuit! I started with a minor toothache about 10 days ago. Like one of these classical sonatas, the tempo and intensity increased gradually at first and by the end of it all, I was positively galloping to the dentists’ office.

The saga started with the revelation that I had wisdom teeth left. I thought that all that was gone a few years ago. But after a half dozen x-rays taken in increasingly awkward positions with my jaw propped open, my dentist (who has the bedside manner of a goose denied its supper) said I needed surgery – for the wisdom (teeth) was hard to get to. 

I whelped. 

By means of an answer, she took what felt like a hot knitting needle and plunged it into my gums. When I leapt out of the chair, she looked proud of her deductive skills and told me that it was as she suspected: I have a toothache and needed surgery. 

So, it was that I found myself on a chair, and going under. I suppose these anesthesiologists have a way of confirming that one has really transcended the realm of our daily living. I don’t know what technique was used. But like one of those Disney princesses in fairy tales, I was woken up a few hours later and I got to ask the surgeon and nurses “Oh! Where am I?” – only I don’t think any sounds came out. 

I was whipped to a nearby wheelchair and wheeled to the car where the husband looked suitably sympathetic, though I could see he was waiting to laugh once I did. But I suppose common courtesy kept him from starting the hilarities. I appreciated it. 

When finally, I managed to get a glimpse of myself, I did let out a hollow laugh. He turned and after ascertaining that I was amused let out a nice, generous laugh. The left side of my face looked like it was the storage shelf for a mini water melon.

The eye drooped, the cheek bulged, the nostril flared, the chin braced, the ear held on, the eyelids closed, the eyelashes stuck together, the lips and tongue all looked and felt as one, and the whole head felt like a lemon that has just been through a squeezer and a bloater at the same time. In time, I was assured that all this would unstick and unravel and un-bilge and un-bulge, but for now, I had to adorn the stiff upper lip (only the lip and t were…) 

It was what I call an interesting week. Sleep eluded me at nights inspite of the painkillers, and I found myself looking out the window often. I didn’t know our old home was a such an interesting hangout. One night I saw a raccoon family jump over the fence. First , the mother came along and she must’ve given her kits the signal and soon, a nice, large family trooped across the lawn looking inquisitive, happy and content. This mother was obviously doing a good job for all the kits listened to her directions and seemed to have camaraderie amongst themselves. 

Another night, I heard the unmistakable hoots of owls, and though I scoured the trees nearby, could not spot them.

In any case, the old face has straightened itself out again and the pain has subsided somewhat, and so I shall leave the creatures of the night to their own devices.

Bon Nuit! Wisdom reigns again.

The Eyes of Covid

I had to leave for India somewhat urgently. The father had mysteriously picked up a strain of Typhoid and Covid, the mother had Covid after days of caring for the former. As can be imagined, it was not the easiest frame of mind in which travel plans were made. Traveling anywhere in the middle of the pandemic is a nightmare. Traveling from the US to the East is never an easy task. So, traveling from the United States to India during the peak of the Omicron variant of the Covid pandemic is doubly painful. I am grateful I was able to make it though. With flights being the way they are, and travel plans being so erratic, travel is to be avoided if possible. However my travel was unavoidable. 

I took care of things like making a pest of myself with the children since I shall be missing them for sometime, returning the books in the library, packing gloves, masks, and Clorox wipes for the old home etc. The husband’s face, in the meanwhile, took on a serious look, and he plunged into the mode of planning and getting the important things done. 

The husband in planning mode is a force to reckon with. Phone calls flew, chat messages scrambled and unscrambled themselves with the might of the Internet’s speed thrown at them. Friends who had recently made the journey were consulted, advice was given, and mysterious packages containing masks of various sizes and shapes were dropped off at the curb by different cars and occupants. Some of them had recently come back from India, and so, masks for long term wear were dropped off.

One mask made me look like a duck, another like a monkey, and the third like a surgeon. Based on popular user experience, the duck incarnation won the round for the flight. The strap went over the head, and was no problem at all throughout. So, off I went, intensely aware of the long journey between my adult and childhood homes. It might’ve taken 80 days to go around the world before air travel. With air travel, it took approximately 32 hours door-to-door.

Boston Science Museum – Dinosaur with Mask

I have always felt that if there was one place that got the full blast of human emotions, it must be hospital corridors, and airports. I was stopped by the security officer who saw my boarding pass to New Delhi airport and started talking to me in Hindi. 

“Sab teek hai?” He asked me, a look of concern in his eyes. (It is astounding how much we notice the eyes post-Covid. I wonder whether babies born in Covid times leaped ahead with this skillset). I was a little confused and taken aback at first- but nodded. Intensely aware that not always will this be the case, and grateful that this time it was.

P.S: The parents are recovering well, and the old father has been itching to start his stock marketing, and has been given the green light to do so.

Why is it all Political?

I was listening to an author, Sayantani Dasgupta, speak the other day, and she said, “Imagination is a political act.”

I jotted down the phrase. Several times during the next few days, the phrase would peek out at me as I went about my work. I mused and smiled when it unexpectedly caught my eye.

Four years ago, I had traveled to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania the week prior to the elections after mailing in my ballot in anticipation of the journey. The day of the 2016 elections, I was at a conference in Texas. The day was busy enough. I moved from session to session assimilating, learning and wondering a little how the elections were going. But I was not overly concerned. My focus was on learning. The polls had shown that Hillary Clinton will be in power soon. There was nothing to fear. I was ready to join the Pantsuit Nation in celebrating our first ever woman president. 

That night, alone in the hotel room in Texas, I switched on the television, after a hot shower, though all I wanted to do was sleep. It had been a 14 hour day, and I found myself drifting off to sleep every now and then.  Finally, when the tides began to turn, I thought my over-tired brain was playing games. The next few days were indeed one of shock, and given that I was far from my family and friends, I held it in as best as I could. Racism and bigotry seem to have received an amplifier and I felt more vulnerable than ever. I was not white, not male, not a Christian, not this, not that, and certainly not anything. How could one individual suddenly make me, a being of flesh, blood and emotions,  into so many things I was not?

Since then, we have seen things happen that are indeed too strange for fiction. Divisive people have a way of polarizing the environment around them. Slowly, I noticed how the literature around me changed: Posts and books giving us hope, filling us with age old wisdom. Every blustery tweet or policy was analyzed and we have had the busiest most riled up period in recent memory. 

But it also helped us all grow in so many ways. To realize that we are all different. All different in our ideologies, all different in what is important to us, all different in what  affects us, and how it does. For all of the politics, and whether or not people supported the Democrats or the Republicans, I do not waver in one thing – people are inherently good. They do want the best for themselves, theirs and the larger community, and in that regard, we are the same despite our differences.

Some days, I think of the Dalai Lama, meditating on the state of the world for 3 hours every morning. I wonder how he does it, and I marvel at the compassionate view he takes of humanity. The 45th President has taught us that no matter how strongly we feel about somethings, we cannot change how others feel about the same things. He taught us grudging acceptance. He taught us to value competence. He showed us how everything could become a political act with a dictator. 

everything_is_political

Travel became a political act.

Health became a political act.

Climate Change became a political act.

Science became a political act.

Now, Imagination is a political act.

Today, the only political act I can think of in my power, is Voting. 

Before Being becomes a political act, it is time to act.

Continue reading “Why is it all Political?”

The Kaleidoscope of Life on Earth 🌏

“Hmm…how Covid has changed things right Amma?” said the daughter when I walked into her room one day, and spotted ‘Greece’ sprawled across the whiteboard. She has been spending her summer making minor changes to the decorations in her room. As most teens do, she has a fond attraction to her room, and one day I found her looking at the pictures she had printed out to make a sort of picture collage. Her teenage eye-roll and monosyllabic answers fell away as soon as I showed an interest in the choice of pictures she had laid out on the floor arranging and rearranging them to see the best patterns.

How do you see the best patterns in a kaleidoscope? Everything seems beautiful, everything seems fine, and yet the artistic piece of her fussed with the layout and order of the pictures. There were pictures of happy people, little cafes, books, beaches, forests, city lights, quotations, rainbows, flowers, and small towns. The collage was eclectic enough to interest me. She gurgled and burst forth with the thought that went into them. I listened amused. 

By then, her excited voice had attracted her little brother and fond father into the room. Her brother painstakingly wrote ‘Mars’ below ‘Greece’.

“Mars! Seriously dude- next thing we know you will be lugging us into black holes and having us all burst into all the tiny starry bits like your Avengers or Star Wars superhero dudes in their adventures! No! No space travel!”

“Just yet”. I added and she gave me a look that indicated that this idiocy with space is because I indulge him with this stuff. I laughed out loud, and the children joined in too.

“And while we are at it,  no fictional or mythical places either. Only places that we can locate on a known map of the world.”

“Sheesh – she is so strict!” said the young explorer of the cosmos.

Travel_dreams

Cautiously, like deer in a prairie, we approached the topic of places we’d like to visit, ready to scurry back to Covid restrictions. Slowly, the name scrawled on a whiteboard set the stage. In the safe company of just the four of us, it felt good to take a peek into travel dreams again. It was done at first soberly – how happily we had taken international travel for granted? How happily we had taken good health for granted? Disconcerting as the Covid situation has been, it has also made us sit up and take notice of the beautiful things surrounding us on Earth. 

Once we started talking of lands beyond our day-to-day, a different energy gripped the room. Within moments, distances melted away, and the globe-trotters threw names on the board with no thought to distance or expense. Exactly how dreams should be.

Looking at the list on the board reminded us, however, that our lifetimes were not enough for this sort of ambition. How does one fit in a hike in the Himalayas for a zen feel, with a sort of Darwin-esque trip to the Galapagos? How can one fit the journey of civilization in Greece and Peru, to the pure sounds of nature as yet untouched by mankind? I suppose travel still has a lot to teach us, and post-covid, the world will start to cautiously explore once more.

We started, therefore, with a couple of day trips taken mostly on a week-day taken off from work, so we could avoid crowds. We looked for wide trails on which to get our dose of nature and exercise in. While for the first time thinking of a 2-3 day trip, we looked for godforsaken places. Places people do not usually go to for a vacation. But the house was a good one, pitched atop a hill with the nearest neighbor miles away. There was a  Jane Austen-esque feel to the whole thing. It reminded me of the poem by Wendell Berry: The Beauty of Wild Things.

On Being: The Beauty of Wild Things – By Wendell Berry

I set about the evening meal after the long drive there, while the children ran to find board games to be played that night. I cradled a cup of tea in my hands, as I set the water to boil, and rummaged the contents I had packed with me so as to minimize exposure to the outside world.  Slowly, the kitchen’s essence wafted around the room – smells, heat, textures all dancing together in an exquisite symphony of the senses. A symphony was playing as I cooked, and talked to the children. Here was a lively room packed with energy, activity, witty comments, and chaos that strangely translates to calm.

Inside this house overlooking a river valley, I felt the kaleidoscope of our life on Earth lap at me in waves. Watching the objects in the room around me evoked a strange sense of living  on this earth: the telescope, the books ,the music, the keyboard that promises the best music to those willing to invest in it, the creature comforts of a well-built house with the furnishings about us, the deer grazing in the hillside by us, the beautiful moon, the thousands of stars visible because of the distance from populated areas.

Life_On_Earth

The Peace of Wild Things: By Wendell Berry

I come into the peace of wild things …

And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.

The daughter’s pictures had indeed done a good job of capturing life on earth.