A Forgotten Blessing

Originally published 28/04/20

Since the industrial revolution, Western Society has placed an ever-increasing onus on capital and industry. Careers, routine and the quest for stature and wealth dominate the lives of a great many of us and our need and want for progress and change has been matched only by the diminishing importance we have placed on nature and living in the present.

For some, there’s an uninhibited freedom of joy to the outside world and omission of responsibilities and burdens. So much so that you’re compelled to live in the here and now. It’s man’s need for adventure that resonates most purely away from the shackles of modern society, but there is no such reason that the two cannot live harmoniously.

This surreal circumstance we, as a people, now find ourselves in has reiterated the value of such pleasures and the need for coexistence. It has, by all definitions, grounded us, in a physical sense as much as a mental one. Almost by force, the onus has switched, progress and change have halted, and the simple joy of even just being outside has transcended into the high point of much of our daily lives.

While there is no denying we all crave familiarity right now, it seems clear by our behaviour that a new found respect has emerged. Away from the four walls and mental hindrances of our isolation, our necessary ventures outside and into nature are, for many of us, our sole moments of freedom and release. Perhaps, because, they are the most obvious remedy to our need for space.

There’s an almost instant outpouring of relief in those vital and crucial moments. Our horizons expand, and everything else falls away. So much do we now saviour these moments in fact, that it seems farcical to suggest we’d even taken them for granted in the first place. Freedom of movement, self-expression, and endless space, things that seemed almost trivial because of their relatively free reign in our society are now what we crave and strive for most, grasping with fingertips just out of reach.

Global heartache has left many in a state of total shock, in a world of unfamiliarity and, while it would be indelicate to suggest there were positives to be gained from the pandemic currently gripping our civilisation, a reasonable course of action (perhaps more so for those yet to suffer personal loss) is to learn from this pandemic, however harshly it was thrust upon us.

It seems abundantly clear to many of us now, to appreciate more what we took for granted. To appreciate more the little things, like a bird singing, a tree swaying deftly in the wind, or the sound of running water. It’s these things that provided relief from the often monotonous aspects of our daily routines, and it’s those things that truly kept us going in these most uncanny and challenging of times.