Don't just live the length of your life - live the width of it as well.
Diane AckermanRead
We evolved as creatures knitted into the fabric of nature, and without its intimate truths, we can find ourselves unraveling.
Interpretation
Humans are inherently connected to nature, and neglecting this connection can lead to personal disintegration.
This quote emphasizes the deep relationship between humans and nature, suggesting that our existence is intertwined with the natural world. By recognizing and embracing the truths of our environment, we nurture our well-being, while ignoring these truths can lead to a loss of direction and purpose in life.
In practice
During a speech about environmental conservation.
Don't just live the length of your life - live the width of it as well.
We try to exile ourselves more and more from nature - not always consciously: We build houses; we dismiss nature; nature has to be outside, because we're inside. God forbid something like a cockroach comes inside, or some dust.
We ogle plants and animals up close on television, the Internet and in the movies. We may not worship the animals we see, but we still regard them as necessary physical and spiritual companions. Technological nature can't completely satisfy that yearning.
Because IQ tests favor memory skills and logic, overlooking artistic creativity, insight, resiliency, emotional reserves, sensory gifts, and life experience, they can't really predict success, let alone satisfaction.
American writer_x000D_ _x000D_ 1803-1882_x000D_ _x000D_ Play is our brain's favorite way of learning.
In rare moments of deep play, we can lay aside our sense of self, shed time's continuum, ignore pain, and sit quietly in the absolute present, watching the world's ordinary miracles. No mind or heart hobbles. No analyzing or explaining. No questing for logic. No promises. No goals. No relationships. No worry. One is completely open to whatever drama may unfold.
I wish I was a despot that I might save the noble, the beautiful trees that are daily falling sacrifice to the cupidity of their owners, or the necessity of the poor. The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder.
The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.
Corn wind in the fall, come off the black lands, come off the whisper of the silk hangers, the lap of the flat spear leaves.
The autumn always gets me badly, as it breaks into colours. I want to go south, where there is no autumn, where the cold doesn't crouch over one like a snow-leopard waiting to pounce.
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.
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