Nature

[View page without inline references]

As I'm writing this (I am on family retreat, and typing on my Psion Series 5 [see computers and the technical stuff...]), it's raining quite heavily -- if I stepped about five steps ahead, I would very quickly get wet (I sit outside but under the roof -- even though it's at night, the Psion's back light gives plenty of light for me to see what I am writing). Still, I am dry... And further, as I'm writing, the rain gets heavier and heavier (in fact, I don't think I've seen as heavy rain as this for years), and lighting and thunder make their roaring sounds. And still I am safe as if I were a mile away.

Some would call this "separation from nature". I think it's a very positive effect from the way we live today [see society], compared to, say, a thousand years ago (or even further back, when people had to live in caves). Yet, even though I would classify myself as a quite modern human being, I am not really in fear of nature, or unknown to it. Some of the best moments in my life (well, perhaps that's a little too much, but at least I've had quite a lot of fun :-) ) have been outside in a tent or such, with friends nearby [see society]. We are really dependent on nature -- nature does -- however you put it -- form the base of the way we lived a thousand years ago, and how we live today.

I am fortunate enough to live in a place where I can walk five minutes and suddenly be in the woods (or, walk twenty minutes and suddenly be in the center of Oslo, Norway). I don't use that opportunity that much, but I know that when I move away, I'll probably miss it. There is peace and quiet out there -- even when there are other people there, there is a sense of being in the middle of something beautiful and extremely well-constructed [see religion]. Trees are among the most beautiful objects I know of [see photography] -- so complex, yet still so whole and complete. If I look around (something I happen to do sometimes :-) ), I see some of that same perfection in all of nature. Through thousands of years (or even millions, or billions), everything has been shaped and carved the way it is today -- most of it not involving us humans at all, and yet, I find it beautiful... I honestly do not know if that lies in me or in nature. Is nature made that way so it would be more beautiful, or is man made that way so he would think [see thinking] the nature was beautiful? And what is really beauty [see artistic]? Remember that we as humans ourselves are part of nature, even though (as noted) many of us would consider us "separated" from it. I do not think society is of the evil. And I will now go to bed, listening to the raindrops hitting the roof with that characteristic sound [see music] I also love.