Call of the Wild🦚🦁
Reciprocity: Beauty Prompt for the week
My Dear Beauty Hunter,
This week’s Beauty Prompt is Reciprocity—Answering the Call of the Wild.
Imagine this: as you seek/hunt/notice/desire beauty, that Beauty is seeking/hunting/noticing/desiring you.
What if, as much as we might want more Beauty, Beauty wants more of us?
Sometime in the last three years, while sitting in a swivel chair, staring outside at the trees and fretting about the state of our World (especially the Natural World), I was struck by a twenty-first-century Call of the Wild.
It occurred to me that one of the best ways I could serve our gorgeous, groaning Earth was through the simple act of providing companionship and being a playmate.
Losing my marbles? Having a genius insight? Whatever you call it, I got this great notion that Nature wants me as a witness to both her beauty and deterioration, alongside attempted acts of restoration and salvation, and to experience everything she has to offer.
(And by nature I mean the trees and plants, the weeds, mountains, desert, the sky and wind, water bodies, sun, twilight, natural phenoms and disasters, etc; if you live in a cityscape, use your imagination and turn the buildings into mountains like I did in NYC.)
What if I cast aside habitual thoughts about how nature is good for me, that I need the beauty of nature. (Me! Me! Me!) What if getting up from my comfy winter chair, bundling up and going outside was a form of micro-activism and tending to the World?
I started going for walks with a new curiosity: to see what it would be like to take a walk not for ME, but for NATURE.
One morning, feeling a bit glum, I imagined the trees along my street cheering. “Tatyana’s here, Tatyana’s here!” It was so preposterous and in contrast to my mood, I laughed out loud. Another afternoon, on a walk through my local park, I could almost hear the trees cheering and giggling away in delight that I was out circulating among them. I started heading outside more often just to experience this richness of reciprocity. Afternoons I wanted to nap, I laced up running shoes to go and hang out with the natural world. Never once did I regret it.
Could it be that *I* was exalting the spirit of Nature, the trees and plants, even the sky?
Could it be that YOU are exalting the world by being out in it and that the world / nature needs you in it?
Is this the ultimate reciprocal relationship?
YOUR EXPERIMENT FOR THE WEEK
Play with this idea that Nature wants you in it—that the World wants you in it.
Imagine that the outside world is like a little crowd of playmates at the front door imploring, “Can you come out and play!?”
Pay attention to what you experience/feel when you step out your front door. And if you’re feeling a bit numb, imagine that the entire world is springing to life with joy at your presence. Your own cheering section.
Hell, you might start feeling this reciprocity happen in odd places because Nature lives indoors! Maybe the peanut butter is thrilled to be spooned out of its jar prison and smeared all over a bagel or apple.
Humans are animals are nature.
Imagine we’re all playmates wanting each others’ company. Get out there and see what kind of experience you can create for all of us. Play with nature, experiment, lose a few marbles.
Thank you for turning toward Beauty, and letting Beauty turn toward you.
If you have any questions, ideas or comments about your Beauty Prompt, or you want to share how it went (or is going) for you, let us know in Comments.
XO
Tatyana
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