I’ve always been a wild thing. As a child nature was my playground, and it is still my favourite energy source. City life wears on the senses, and so every chance I get I run outside and tread my feet into the soft earth.
The little patch of grass in my back garden is like a microcosm of our green planet. I call it grass but it is actually a very diverse mix of plants including soft springy mosses, dandelions, miniature blue flowers, daisies, and best of all, the new shoots of trees that come up after the autumn seed fall. I feel very excited when I see these little sturdy shoots, because I know our planet is very much in need of the restoration of the species that used to make up our ancient forests. However, in a couple of weeks, the landlord will invite a gardner round to mow the ‘lawn’ and cut these shoots down in their infancy. It does give me hope, though, that if we are sensitive to it, we might actually be able to nurture rather than castrate, uproot and manipulate Mother Nature’s attempts to repopulate.
What if?
What would happen if we just stopped deciding how nature should present herself in our day to day environment? She’s not likely to argue with concrete and tarmac, though it must make her feel claustrophobic at best. Can we stop pruning and slicing and separating? Can we stop doing this with ourselves? How much of ourselves do we weed and prune and conceal behind a well cultivated ‘border’? Exactly what would grow up in our monocultured life if we encouraged biodiversity and symbiotic relationships within ourselves? It’s just a thought, and a lesson I believe nature is trying to teach us by the way she pours out her abundance on the surface of this planet, if only we’d leave the lawnmower in the shed.
If we are looking for abundance in our life, I believe nature is the best place to start. How are we restricting abundance in our natural environment? How’s that Karma treating us? If we invite a little wilderness into our homes and gardens, perhaps the diversity of abundance will start to bleed into other areas of our lives. Things don’t have to grow up the way we expect them to in order to be exactly what we need.
These Stepford gardens are not nature, they are ‘seen and not heard’ patriarchal manipulations of life force. Nature is yelling pretty loud at the moment. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. What if we started at home to set our wild thing free? What if?
