“It is with acts of attention that we decide who to hear, who to see, and who in our world has agency. In this way, attention forms the ground not just for love, but for ethics.”
Jenny Odell, How To Do Nothing
Living in the Pacific Northwest, I would imagine you have many occasions to be outside in nature. You’re an observer: you look out over the hills and valleys, at the volcanoes and mountain ranges and rivers, at the unbroken miles of evergreen trees, at the coastline and the seals and the herons. Maybe you even know some of their names or how to spot them: maidenhair fern, kingfisher, solomon’s seal, common murre, grey whale.
So many of us wander and hike around this land as observers, without considering that the land is also observing us. Birds and insects and mammals and even plants are aware of the presence of other living beings, and are almost certainly aware of you as you move through the places where they live. The crows in your neighborhood know your face - they remember who has been unkind to them and who has given them food, and who poses a threat, and who is unthreatening.
Pause here:
Has this occurred to you before?
How do you feel when contemplate this truth?
What thoughts, convictions, or questions arise for you when you reflect on this?
The illusion of loneliness
Occasional loneliness is a universal human experience, and it’s no secret that pretty much everyone is feeling more lonely these days. We’re alienated, still reeling from COVID isolation, and addicted to our phones, and there’s no shortage of stimuli, but we don’t get a lot of human contact. We’re losing our third places, and after college it can be difficult to make new friends. But are we really alone? By what metric do we define aloneness, and who do we include in the category of “neighbor” in our minds?
A few years ago I started a project called the Cascadia Census, which was borne out of a desire to define, process, and understand my experience of loving nature - why did I love nature? What is nature? Who is nature? I decided to document living beings in my bioregion, including my immediate neighborhood in Portland, OR. Who lived in my yard? Who lived in the trees down the street? Who lived there only in some seasons, and who was there throughout all seasons? What were their names? What did they do all day? It was partially out of a sense of artistic curiosity, but as I added entries, I found that the practice of simply noticing the living world around me gave me a deep sense of connectedness. On days when I felt lonely, I could go outside with my camera and discover I was not alone - indeed, I existed. I would see the birds notice my presence, and know that fact innately.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is not just sitting in one spot meditating every day and then going about your day - it is an ongoing practice of noticing, of cultivating openness and curiosity, and of becoming aware of your connection to everything that is around you. A mindful relationship to nature is one of noticing, relating, and loving - you can do it with every step you take, simply by noticing the give of the forest floor under your feet, or the varied sensations of bark on different trees. Whether with humans or non-humans, mindfulness is the pathway out of loneliness and isolation and into true and loving relationship - you generally can’t notice your connectedness with others unless you take the time and cultivate the attention span to be able to do so, because it arises out of a quiet, still place within you. It requires understanding the inner thought patterns and distractions that can disrupt that feeling of connection, and compassionately allowing those to fall away, even for one moment. If you want to feel less lonely, you have to let yourself become quiet and still, and become open to noticing all the ways in which you are not alone. You might be surprised at how much your conscious mind wants to keep you feeling lonely, and attach you to this narrative of being ultimately alone - and that’s okay. That’s an opportunity for self-compassion and loving detachment from that narrative, and beyond it lies a still, wise place within you that has all the tools it needs to be in connection with others.
Loving nature and the natural world can also be a loving pathway back into connection with other humans. Trauma, loss, betrayal, low self-esteem - all of these can make loving another human feel treacherous. If it feels too high-stakes to love another human openly, try it with the tree outside your doorstep, or with your dog or cat. Let them be your secure base, knowing you can return to them at any time, and from there, try taking small relational risks when you feel ready for that. Practice at your own pace, and try to increase your tolerance little by little, using mindfulness as a teacher.
Deciding who matters
You might be thinking that this sounds nice, but that for you in particular, you know it would just be cope. I get this reaction somewhat frequently when I put this concept forward, and I think it’s really interesting! You may not intellectually think that you are superior to nature, but the reaction I described above is the belief of human superiority in motion. You happen to be using it to be cruel to yourself and adding to your narrative that you are unworthy of love or belonging, but it still indicates an attitude of humans mattering more, and other beings mattering less. This goes back to the I-Thou concept I discussed in a previous post:
And so, in an effort to break our illusion of loneliness and cultivate a true sense of belonging in this world, I’m going to suggest a movement toward nature that is not just based in you cultivating more self-compassion, but is also based in your sense of responsibility, agency, and impact over the world around you. The Jenny Odell quote I included at the beginning of this post makes this argument more elegantly than I can, but I believe that when you love something or someone - and I mean really love them - you also become somewhat responsible for them. That doesn’t mean you’re their caretaker - it’s more that you have a responsibility to act in a loving and intentional way towards them, because you are in relationship with a complex other, whose inner life you will never fully know or understand. It’s that move away from being a consumer to being a participant.
You have agency in this world. It matters how you relate to the world around you - the trick is using that fact not to continue to be cruel to yourself and berate yourself for not being “ good enough,” and instead using it as an opportunity to exercise your ability to act positively in the world around you, and experience the associated rewards: fulfillment, meaning, connection, peace, determination, a sense of your own capability, a felt sense of agency, resourcefulness, and maneuverability. But you have to start with love.