I’ve just returned from a run on Hampstead Heath (for those that do not know – a beautiful wooded area in London) and was delighted by the changing colours of leaves – both still clinging (only just!) to branches and falling, carpet-like, under my feet. And I started thinking about the (man-introduced) clock change yesterday, which seems to be in tune with the natural changing of seasons and shorter daylight hours, so that it’s now easier to get up in the morning once the first rays of sunshine appear, and easier to start winding down when natural light subsides…
How many of us still follow – or even notice – the changing patterns of seasonal light, beyond the usual complaints of lack of sunshine or long winter evenings? How quickly – relatively speaking, in evolutionary terms – have we become accustomed to the industrial (man-made) concept of time, ticking along our school, working and social lives.
But maybe there’s no conflict between the two? Maybe when we slow down and listen to our natural rhythm – the one in flow with nature, and our bodies – we find that we achieve far more in our externalised, industrialised, productivity-oriented lives?
In the same way that in coaching I often tell clients that real learning comes not just from reaching a goal but from the journey itself, it is when we slow down and observe our natural rhythms – and those of nature around us – that true insights happen.
After all, if we just follow a linear goal – and a linear, man-created, concept of time – we may get what we want, but we will miss out on what we never thought we could have, on the opportunities, thoughts and encounters that we didn’t dare imagine because they weren’t part of our linear plan.
And the true balance lies in combining the two: following man-created time and operating in it, while observing and learning from nature, with its seasonal changes, its adaptive mechanisms, its decaying and dying, only to be reborn in an even more magnificent display!
Mindfulness in a Digital World 