D.H. Lawrence once said, “I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself…” and its a line from a poem I have never forgotten. The lesson in this, the lesson I’ve always taken with me as I have wandered through forests, by seasides, over mountaintops, across valleys or swamps, is simple but vital to my understanding of this world and its inhabitants. We have more to learn from the wild creatures that surround us than we’re probably capable of comprehending. We have more to learn of stillness, of endurance, of how to navigate a life taking only what we need and forgoing the excess. Humans stand alone in the animal kingdom in a multitude of categories, some good, some not so good, and we crown ourselves kings of the kingdom for those we seem to rise above the rest. What we miss in this, is all the aforementioned, all the lessons we have to learn from our furry, feathered, or scaled friends.
One of these lessons I’ve kept close over these last 10 strange months, is that of stillness. It’s that of remembering our own strength, our own resilience, our ability to be calm in the face of ferocious winds, of bone-chilling cold. I follow the birds on my walks through the woods and I stare up in awe at them as they sit soft and quiet through snowfall and storm. I wonder what this means, perhaps not to them, but to me, as I wander through a life filled with blizzard and frost.
What lessons can we learn? What lessons have you learned from wild things? Share, please.
I follow the birds
and wonder at their stillness
despite the cold wind.
Haiku on Life by Tyler Knott Gregson
Song of the Day
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I’ve learned a couple lessons from snakes that have been coming in handy for me right now:
The first is that a non-venomous snake is a metaphor for fear. It may look all scary and make you uncomfortable but in the end, it has no power over you and no ability to hurt you. Just like fear.
The second is that snakes can teach us about transformation. They have to shed their skin or risk dying and that’s often the same with us. We have to let go of things in order to continue surviving and thriving.
These are both lessons that I’m carrying as I deal with my own fears and transformation.
The stillness is one of the reasons I love to hike. The wind in the pines whispering like my thoughts, telling me to hush and just be for a while. It's cleasing for my soul.