There is a truly astonishing sculpture park called “Les Lapidiales” near here. It’s been created in an old quarry and each year several sculptors from around the world are invited to come and create some new work. Most of it is created on the bare rock faces but there are also many standalone pieces.
This is just one of the works which has been created. It’s immense. And it’s wonderful. I don’t know what was in the sculptor’s mind when they carved this out, but for me, it’s a fabulous portrayal of the fact that every one of us emerges as a unique individual created from the stardust which formed this small blue planet.
There’s a tendency to think of “nature” or the “environment” as something out there, a place where we can visit or where we can live for a while. But the truth is we are not separate from nature. We are part of this whole planet. We are born in nature, live in this one massively interconnected environment and we die in nature.
Our body is formed from all that already exists and cycles back through the rest of the world continuously. We are not separate fixed objects but unceasing flows of atoms, elements, energy and information.
It’s better to think of ourselves as subjects within these flows than as objects separate from each other and from the world.
This work of art captures the idea of our embeddedness. You can never know or understand yourself or another without paying attention to the multiple contexts and environments of our existence. Our physical, familial, social and cultural webs of belonging.
We are embodied, embedded, extended selves.
Quite simply, we are not separate. Nature is us. We are Nature. This is the home where we are created, the home we die in, the home we never leave.
Heroes Not Zombies 
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