13/02/2026
I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to live well in these pretty strange, and disconcerting times.
We are surrounded by widening inequality, well documented abuses of power that seem to go unchallenged, and species loss at an alarming scale that feels almost impossible to comprehend.
It seems to me that if we sometimes feel heavy, worried, frightened or quietly heartbroken, that isn’t us being fragile. We are responding to what's all around us. Our nervous systems are registering that something is really wrong.
And platitudes don’t really help, do they? "It’s just part of life and nature", "there’s nothing we can do", "nature will find a way”, "everything happens for a reason", “just stay positive”, “it’s not real anyway, it's all an illusion.” None of that meets the reality of what we’re living through, it just bypasses it.
I keep coming back to this realisation - that the world is not a backdrop for our personal healing journeys. We can't simply float above the world while we “work on ourselves.” We have to heal in the world. We can ONLY heal in it - in relationship, in community, in the web of life we’re part of.
Nature is not there for us to use and extract from. The moss is not there to soothe us. The oak is not there to symbolise our growth and strength. The land does not exist to facilitate our emotional breakthroughs. And yet when we enter into equal relationship with nature with respect and true reciprocity, something shifts.
When I’m feeling overwhelmed by the scale of things, it helps me to come back to something tangible. The smell of damp earth. The steadiness of a tree that has stood through decades of weather. The sound of birdsong at dusk. Droplets of dew on a spider's web.
Something shifts in my body when I pay attention like that. My breath slows down, my shoulders drop, and that's not sentimental, it’s biology. Moments of awe and wonder, even really small ones, calm the stress response and widen our perspective. These moments remind us we belong to something larger than the news cycle.
The human world can feel like a malfunctioning amplifier, all outrage loops, headlines, hot takes, algorithmic provocation, endless commentary layered on commentary. A kind of collective noise and fury that swells until it feels all consuming, almost as if this is all there is.
And then a squirrel pauses mid-scurry, digs a small hole and presses a hazelnut nut into the earth with attention and conviction. A single leaf detaches from a twig and spirals downward, unhurried, obeying laws of aerodynamics not harried by opinion. And it's in those moments when our 'other-than-human' kin show us how to live well that the volume of noise seems to drop. The problems of the world haven't disappeared and injustices haven't evaporated, but our nervous systems reset.
The 'noise' we live with - the language, screens, abstractions, projections, stories - do matter because they shape policy and culture and deeply affect our lives. But this noise is human-generated signalling, bouncing around human-made systems.
A squirrel burying a nut is not 'brought about', and a leaf falling is not performing for a consituency. These are events in the physical world governed by the laws of physics and biology, that occur regardless of human opinion, belief, or observation.
Our bodies recognise these events as 'real' in a different way. Watching completely natural movement patterns slows the mind down and calms the stress response. The noise recedes into the background and it’s almost as if wonder and awe retune the receiver. The fury is still broadcasting from the disconnected bubble of human-centric hubris, but we are no longer locked onto that frequency.
There’s something incredibly grounding and system regulating about encountering processes that are not all about us. The squirrel is not making a point with her hazlenut. The leaf is not trying to persuade us to believe anything. And the tree is not curating a public persona. They are simply participating in natural cycles older than our politics and when we notice and participate, we start to remember that we also have our own.
Next there’s community, and the power of a real conversation, sharing a meal, offering a skill, extending a kindness, or holding a boundary. None of these things will single-handedly fix the grimness we are seeing. But they do stitch us back into the web of life, one thread at a time. Being in community is how we remind our bodies that we are not isolated, powerless individuals, but participants in a living system.
Despair narrows us, and relationship widens us.
The questions I ask myself often are whether it's possible to hold grief for what is being lost and still notice the intricate beauty of a fallen leaf? Can we stay awake to injustice and still allow ourselves to feel wonder and awe?
I believe we can, and it seems to me that this is the work we need to do. It's not about bypassing the darkness, and it's not collapsing into it either. The key to it all is how we stay in relationship with it all.
We can only heal in the world, not away from it, and we make ourselves stronger through connection so that we can keep showing up for the planet, the animals, the trees, the land, and each other, with integrity, compassion, gratitude and care.
