"There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle. The
other is as though everything is a miracle."
-- Albert Einstein*
I realize now that I've been blessed in that I didn't grow up and don't live my life with an abundance of money or "stuff." As a result, from an early age, I knew I needed to find happiness with simple things - going to parks instead of on extravagant trips, visiting sites I could drive to versus flying in airplanes, reading books to take to me to faraway places and to meet new people, finding beauty in the nature around me not at gorgeous man-made resorts. I've been blessed because it's brought me to nature. My free time is spent in nature exercising or just sitting and being, and as a result of being there, I notice.
We've brought friends to camps with us or on rides who talk and talk and never turn their heads to look out the car windows or at the mountains or the lake when they sit at the lake shore. They don't even seem to notice the nature. To them, possibly, nothing is a miracle; they don't notice.
Anyone who spends time in nature regularly looks at the world more as a miracle than not. When in nature, how can you not? An author has written a book of late about the "e-generation," our kids, and his concerns about how they'll turn out. He says that due to two things kids are being deprived - the myriad of electronics that are overtaking our lives and frightened parents that don't let children just be kids and be on their own but instead keep them inside where they're safe, controlled, nearby. He says that not spending time in nature depletes human beings in every way - physically, emotionally, spiritually, creatively. All the things that make up the totality of a person are being starved by not going to nature regularly. How will this generation be lacking due to this critical life force being hidden from them?
Those who see everything as a miracle notice; they make an effort to truly see the details. If you truly look at the intricate patterns within flowers or in spider webs, and they're all different, how can you not pause and see the miracle? How fortunate we are to be able to see all the vivid colors in nature. How can it not make you pause and wonder?
The way to see all things as miracles is to get into nature, look at the details, pause, get quiet and observe, just be. Turn off your electronics from time to time. Don't rush and be preoccupied with the busyness of daily life - get away to the greens, the blues, pinks, purples, oranges and the earth tones of the nature all around us. Notice. Breathe it in.
*Source: Digh, Patti. Life is a Verb. Guilford, Connecticut: skirt! The Globe Pequot Press, 2008. Print. P. 176
www.lifeisaverb.net
www.pattidigh.com
Photo: Scarborough Beach
