Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Cleaning up, more…

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Often we are so focused on cleaning up our homes, our environments, that we even feel the need to clean up nature…

Of course there is a difference between ‘nature’ as in the flowers and potted plants we may have inside our homes, ‘nature’ as in our gardens, ‘nature’ as in parks and forests, and ‘nature’ as in the environment that makes it possible for us to inhabit the earth.

In our homes and gardens, ‘nature’ becomes part of our environment, and as such we tend to make sure it plays by our rules. In parks, forests, and ‘the great outdoors’, we become part of nature’s environment. And while we should clean up after ourselves and be careful not to pollute nature, there is no need to clean up ‘nature’ itself.

As it turns out, ‘nature’ is very well equipped to clean up after itself!
And it does so promptly, without secondary considerations, emotional attachments, or ~ as us humans may experience ~ the need to procrastinate. For nature it is part of life to recycle that which is no longer useful in its current form. That way, a tree that is at the end of its life-span becomes the home of insects, eventually breaking up into parts laying on the ground; and finally becoming the fertile soil for new trees to grow from.
It is a process that may take as long as a decade (or more) for a big tree; for an animal that dies it doesn’t take quite as long. In a matter of weeks the bones and teeth are pretty much all that remains…

If there is a memory similar to how we have our memories, it is embedded in the landscape. And while the memory itself may stay alive for ages to come, there will not necessarily be any physical reminders of it ~ in the way we choose to surround ourselves with physical reminders of our memories; of where we have been, and what we have done…

Some may say that we should model our lives after nature’s cycles of life and death; and the way it cleans up after itself. On the other hand, the way we build and rebuild our lives throughout our lifespan is part of our own process of (spiritual) growth. Through the choices we make we create not only our environment, yet also how we will learn the life lessons we came in with as part of our personal paths.

Whichever way we look at it, cleaning up is part of the cycle of things…
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