Heroes Not Zombies

If you put the French word I’ve used as the title of this post into the search box at the top of my blog, you’ll find quite a few posts where I’ve written about this.

Émerveillement has become one of my most favourite words. There isn’t a direct translation into English but it includes concepts such as wonder, amazement, awe and delight.

I feel all that when I come across something as beautiful and astonishing as the dragonfly in this photo. What an amazing creature! I look at a dragonfly and think I don’t know how anyone to imagine such beauty and structure. They way it flies and hovers boggles my mind. It can zip away in apparently any direction it wishes in an instant.

Compared to the admittedly superb technologies that we humans have invented Nature leaves us standing. And that humbles me. The powers of adaptation and growth which we see in all living beings far surpasses what we humans can create. Complex adaptive systems are at a different level entirely from complicated machines.

I believe that we have a LOT to learn from Nature and the better we understand plants, insects, animals and ecosystems, the better we will get at living healthy, sustainable, thriving lives.