A Life of Contrast

On nature, reverence and being human

Cultivating a connection with nature is part of cultivating a connection with ourselves. It seems an obvious thing to say, yet we have arranged so much of our lives as though the two could be separated. We speak of nature as somewhere we might go at the weekend, if the weather holds and there is nothing more pressing to do. Meanwhile, our own nature becomes something we try to understand almost entirely indoors, through conversation, books, screens and the endless consideration of what is going on inside our heads.

There is value in all of that. I am hardly going to argue against books or conversation. But there is something peculiar about trying to understand ourselves while paying so little attention to the living world to which we belong. We have bodies. We get hungry, tired, restless, cold. We need light, food, water and sleep. However sophisticated our understanding of ourselves becomes, these rather ordinary facts remain. An interpretation of your life cannot take the place of actually inhabiting it.

Much of the world we move through has been organised around human intentions. Buildings, roads, workplaces, shops, the things we carry in our pockets. Everywhere there are instructions, invitations, demands. Buy this. Attend to that. Respond. Improve. Even our leisure can become another place in which to measure ourselves. There is always something to achieve, document or have an opinion about. After a while, it is easy to forget that anything exists beyond this conversation we are having with ourselves.

Then you stand by the sea. The water is doing what it is doing. Birds are feeding along the shore. The tide will come and go regardless of your current life drama. There can be considerable relief in that. Your concerns are still yours, but for a while they occupy a place within something larger. You can watch a bird for no other reason than that it has caught your attention. It has a life to get on withAnd you get to simply witness its play.

This is not some dreamy-eyed vision of abandoning society and going off to live in the woods. I like shelter. I like hot water, music, a decent cup of coffee and people who can make me laugh. Human culture contains extraordinary things. We have made language, art and places where we can gather. We have developed ways of caring for one another that would be impossible for a person entirely alone. There is no need to despise those achievements in order to recognise that something is missing from the way we live.

And nature deserves a more honest account than we sometimes give her. She is beautiful, but she can be merciless in her indifference to our needs. The same sea that settles you on a quiet morning can kill you. Cold is cold, however spiritually receptive you happen to feel. Hunger does not become more meaningful because the surroundings are magnificent. Much of what we have built protects us from realities we can afford to romanticise precisely because we are protected from them.

Calling nature cruel is itself a human judgement. The weather has no intention of hurting us. But it is equally questionable to imagine that it has arranged itself for our healing. We bring our longing for kindness, reassurance and meaning into these encounters. Sometimes we find something that answers us. Sometimes we get wet and go home. A relationship with nature has to be spacious enough to include an afternoon that does nothing for us in particular.

What I am calling for is a life of contrast. A movement between culture and nature that nourishes us in body, mind and soul. We can belong to the human world and still make room for experiences that are not organised entirely around it. An evening of conversation and a morning walking in silence can each offer something the other cannot. There is pleasure in moving between them, in discovering that you need company and solitude, language and stretches of time when nothing needs to be put into words.

That contrast need not involve remote wilderness. There are trees along streets, birds on roofs, weather passing over housing estates. A familiar patch of sky can hold your attention if you give it a moment. Access matters, of course. Time, transport and the places available to us are not evenly shared. But I would be wary of making connection with nature into another expensive experience we have to travel somewhere impressive to obtain. The places we can return to regularly may come to mean more than the ones that briefly astonish us.

Familiarity changes what we see. You return to the same stretch of shore and begin to recognise what the tide reveals. You notice where water gathers after rain, or which tree loses its leaves first. A place acquires detail. There are things you anticipate and things that surprise you. You might learn the names of what lives there. You might begin by admitting how little you know. Either way, you are moving beyond an appreciation of scenery into an acquaintance with a particular place.

There is something here that matters to our relationship with ourselves. Outside, we can discover needs and capacities that our usual routines give little room to express. How much we enjoy walking without a destination. How uncomfortable we are with silence. How quickly we reach for distraction when there is no obvious task. We may discover that we are tired, or that we have more energy than we thought. These are small discoveries, but they concern the actual person living the life, rather than the person we keep insisting we ought to be.

When I speak of our true nature, I do not mean some flawless version of ourselves hidden underneath the mess. Our nature includes appetite, fear, aggression and dependency, as well as tenderness and the capacity for joy. Looking honestly at the living world gives us little reason to imagine that being natural means being innocent. We still have to make judgements about how we behave. An impulse does not become wise simply because we can find its equivalent elsewhere in nature. We are capable of reflection, and that capacity asks something of us.

For me, reverence is a way of approaching all this without having to resolve it into a comforting picture. Nature is not something I feel called to worship. I want to relate to it with attention and respect. Reverence allows me to recognise that a living thing has an existence beyond whatever use or meaning I might find in it. The bird is more than a symbol in my private story. The tree does not need to teach me a lesson in order to deserve its place. I can be moved by them while allowing them to remain themselves.

I am drawn to saying that nature wants to connect, relate and co-create. There is something in that language that expresses how alive an encounter can feel. But I cannot know what nature wants, or whether wanting is even the right word. What I can say is that we already participate in it. We breathe, eat, move, build and leave things behind. Our presence has consequences. The relationship exists before we choose to acknowledge it. We can become more conscious of how we take part.

That is where the question becomes less comfortable. If nature matters to us only because it helps us feel better, our interest remains rather narrow. A relationship asks us to consider what happens on the other side of our enjoyment. How do we leave the places we visit? What do we tolerate being damaged for our convenience? Do we care about a habitat that is unremarkable to look at, or an animal we find unpleasant? Reverence is easy in front of a beautiful view. Its meaning becomes clearer when it costs us something or asks us to reconsider a habit.

I believe this connection is essential to the fullness of our human experience. Our continued existence depends on the living world, whether we feel connected to it or not. Conscious connection gives us an opportunity to bring that dependence into the way we live. It can inform what we value, what we protect and what we understand ourselves to be responsible for. It also allows us pleasure, curiosity and company beyond our own species. There is so much here to become acquainted with.

We are special and blessed beings in this place. I can say that without needing to believe we are its only special beings, or that everything else has been provided for our benefit. We can recognise something of the world that sustains us. We can love it, investigate it, speak about it and choose to care for parts of it we may never personally need. Those are considerable capacities. I would like us to take them seriously. If we are going to claim a special place in nature, what kind of presence are we prepared to be?