Heroes Not Zombies

I have a number of photos of this type. You could say they are photos of the sea. You could say “there’s nothing in them”! (But I’d disagree). You could say they are photos of light.

For me this is a photo of three elements – water (obviously), fire (the Sun’s light reflected on the water), and air (the pale white sky). There might even be a hint of the fourth element, earth (just beyond the upper band of light…..is that land I can see?)

But primarily, I see this as a photo of light. I’m not sure why there are two parallel bands of white light, one in the foreground and the other almost on the horizon. I think that’s odd. Why aren’t there more reflections? Are there just two gaps in a cloudy sky letting the sunlight through to create these two narrow strips? I don’t know, and I don’t remember what the sky was like.

I know the sea can show us a rich palette of colours but I really like how, in this image, both the sea and the sky appear monochrome. This isn’t a photo shot in black and white, but the brightness of the light has bleached out all the colours.

Ultimately this image says to me – illumination – and that’s a favourite word of mine. I like to understand. I like to see things clearly. I like it when suddenly, in the middle of someone’s story, I gain insight into their unique, and personal life.

But, more simply, perhaps, this is just one of those images where I can sit and gaze at it, and lose myself…..slow down and lose my sense of time and place…..absorb myself into the scene and feel the artificial boundaries disappear so that I feel at One with the universe.

Maybe it’ll do the same for you.

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When you see a seed head like this, holding an abundant supply of seeds, all waiting for the next breeze to come and whisk them away, spreading them far and wide, you can’t help but have some sense of awe.

Isn’t it incredible to see this? Look at the structure and look at the sheer magnificent abundance.

When I come across this I do think of how abundance is the key characteristic of the universe – not scarcity. Changing the mindset from a scarcity one to one of abundance changes the way we engage with life. It helps us to move from insecurity to security, to embrace change, and to quieten down our fears and anxieties.

But looking at an abundance of seeds like this brings something else to mind for me – potential.

I mean, just look at the potential held in this one stem of seeds. Every single one of these seeds could be the beginning a new plant. Some of them might fall locally and start to grow where they fall, whilst others might be carried far in the wind landing in micro-environments, very different from the one where they were born. This dispersal vastly increases the chances that the plant will successfully propagate its offspring by sending them far and wide and giving them a huge range of opportunities for growth.

I think of an image like this whenever I consider any single person, because within all of us there are vast, you could say infinite, potentials. Most of them, we will never realise in one lifetime. What an astonishing gift! What an incredible scope!

Couple this vast potential with an abundance mind set, and the world opens up to us. We have so many different ways to become the unique selves that only we can become.

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Are you familiar with the concept of the “wood wide web”? It’s a term which has been coined to describe the vast, intricate, integrated network of communication channels which spread through every forest. The trees don’t just communicate with each other by sending out chemicals from their leaves through the air to other trees, or to repel noxious insects, nor do they just send molecules and messages to each other through directly from root to root, but their root systems are deeply embedded in vast webs of fungi and “micro” fungi (that’s tiny fungi!!). We’ve discovered that the incredible interactions between trees and fungi can share information and materials right throughout the entire forest…..to the extent that you can really think of the forest as one enormous organism.
Well, similar pathways and mechanisms have now been described in flowers. It seems that flowering plants, too, communicate, not just by colour and scent, but through similarly entwined symbiotic relationships with micro-organisms and fungi.
Guess what? We communicate in a vast variety of diverse ways too. Sure, we use language, but we also use facial expressions, body movements and positions, as well as scent, colour and touch. But more than that, our beating hearts send out electromagnetic signals around our bodies…a sort of energy net which can interact with the nets of others close to us. We also communicate by sharing micro-organisms and molecules all of which are too small to see without a microscope.
In fact, just like trees and flowering plants, our hyper-connected existence really means we are so inter-related and so inter-dependent, that we just can’t help communicating with, and influencing, others every moment of every day.
It’s partly because of that, that I decided to start writing these daily posts during the pandemic. It seemed to me that there is a lot of negativity around, a lot of “bad energies”, a lot of fear, anger and hurt. And all of that spreads around our “world wide web” of hyper-connected humanity, and, yes, even the rest of the hyper-connected, natural world. As best I can see, we are creating the kind of world we both imagine and experience, because these connections act as vast feedback loops and accelerators, spreading and magnifying the information which we send out.
So, here I am, every day, sharing with you an image which I hope will enable you to have a mindful moment, a few minutes to pause, and reflect, and to stir within your soul, some wonder, some joy, some delight, and to magnify the love that exists in your heart.
Because, hey, wouldn’t it be great if wonder, joy, delight and love spread around our planet? Wouldn’t it be great if they accelerated and increased as they spread?
Well, that’s my hope. And I hope you’ll do the same, sending out and spreading your own wonders, joys, delights and love around your family, friends, colleagues, and, yes, even strangers.

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This leaf is beautiful. When you look closely you see the incredible, fine web of thin fibres which make up its skeleton. With some leaves you can see this delicate, underlying structure when you hold it up to the sunlight, but with others the green of the leaf is too dense and you aren’t aware of this amazing support system which lies inside.

For me, the idea of a web, of a net, or of a network is fundamental to my understanding of reality. It’s a pretty simple concept at heart – it’s simply nodes and lines – connection points, and connectors.

Our bodies are like this. We are made up of trillions of cells which are all interconnected. Each cell a node, each relationship between one cell and another, a path, or bond, a connector. We function as whole beings emergent from this hidden structure of a network.

Our brains are like this. The specialised nerve cells we call neurones form intricate, flexible, ever changing patterns of connections, of nodes and connectors.

Our circulatory system is like this. Our lungs are like this. All our body systems are interconnected like this.

Our social networks are like this. Each of us is a node in a world-wide net spreading across continents, and back over generations of ancestors.

We might not see these nets very clearly on a day to day basis, but we can draw simplified maps of them – in fact, there is even a name applied to such maps now – “connectomes’ – diagrams of vast webs of connections.

I love all of this.

I love the beauty of the webs and nets. I love knowing that every one of us is connected through infinite interconnected webs like this.

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This tree which someone has sawn through sometime shows the connections between life and death and the way we are created by our daily experiences.

First, although this is clearly a dead tree, a trunk left lying on the ground, you can see the new life springing from it, shooting up into the air searching for the Sun’s energies to capture them, reaching for carbon dioxide and water in the air to transform the invisible into the visible.

There would be no life on Earth without death, and no death without life. I’m not sure we are so good at remembering that. But you can clearly see, in this photo, how inseparable they are….life and death.

Secondly, as someone has cut through this trunk you can see the rings of the tree, each one telling a story of a year in the life of this tree. We haven’t really learned to read these marks terribly well but they tell us of good years and lean years, of the number of years the tree has been alive, and hint at incidents, traumas and recoveries.

How good would it be better able to understand what we can see right before our eyes?

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All forms of life exist within complex webs of relationships. None exist without interacting with other members of the same species and with a multitude of other organisms which make up the rich diverse networks of Earth’s biospheres.

Human beings have taken socialisation to new levels. A baby human would have no chance of survival without a rich number of loving, caring, nourishing relationships.

We need to connect. We need to relate. We need to communicate, to love and to care.

Our brains have evolved to equip us with astonishing abilities to establish and nurture relationships.

So maybe in this pandemic we need to be careful about physical closeness with large groups in closed spaces but now, as ever, we need social closeness not social distancing.

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Since I moved to the French countryside I noticed that Sundays sound different. Well, at least they used to! During lockdown we finally experienced the often talked about “month of Sundays”. What was strikingly different about Sundays was the silence. You could open the front door in the morning, step outside and the first thing you’d notice would be silence. I’ve heard that kind of silence more frequently than ever because most activities have ceased or been significantly cut back, there’s less traffic and fewer planes flying overhead.

The Sunday silence is a particular kind of silence. It’s full of bird songs and calls. So, more the silence of humans than the silence of Nature.

This week a big heat arrived – a “canicule” they call it here – with temperatures hitting high 30s every day. With the heat came a different kind of silence. No bird song. All of Life it seemed was stilled by the heat and the silence reached a depth well below that of a Sunday.

Here’s a video clip I recorded. Turn your volume up to max. The only sounds you’ll hear are me moving my phone!

There’s another silence I know well but which I haven’t experienced since moving here – the silence of the snow. When you wake up one morning and it’s been snowing all night you know it has snowed by the silence before you even look out the window.

The silence of heat and the silence of snow are surprisingly similar!

Well, what do you know? All silence doesn’t sound the same!

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If you look carefully here you can see the remains of two platforms. This was, I think, Morningside Station. The trains still run along these tracks but the traces of the station itself have almost vanished.

This got me thinking about the past, how it never really goes away, but we don’t go there any more, we can’t step out of the present and inhabit the past again.

Some people do try to do that all the same. The past has deep roots and it also has strong tendrils which wind themselves around us. They cling to us and we cling to them.

The present doesn’t exist in isolation. It is shaped by both the past and the future. Sometimes we are so busy, so preoccupied, travelling so fast, that we whizz on by, but the past still exerts its influence all the same.

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The sky above the Charente often looked like this.

Not any more.

These days if I see a single trail in the sky I think “Wow! Look! A plane!” How strange that the world could change so much in such a short time.

I used to look at a sky like this and think “Where is everybody going??!!” I’d wonder where they’d boarded their plane, and where they would disembark. Airports used to be crowded places over-filled with emotional travellers, leaving, arriving, anticipating, worrying……

That’s all changed. It changed virtually overnight. Now the airports have turned into aeroplane parks, with dozens of planes crowding the tarmac. No queues at the Check in counters. No excited huddles of families and friends eagerly waiting the return of loved ones.

Hardly anyone wants to sit, masked, on a plane for hours with dozens of strangers. Conferences, competitions, concerts and celebrations have been cancelled.

Do you think the sky will look this busy ever again? Has mass tourism come to an end? Has Zoom replaced all the conventions and conferences?

Or is it just a matter of time before it will look as if this year never happened?

What do you think?

I think the world is different now. I hope enough of us see that to choose to live differently and to push for real change……with new priorities, new ideas and different ways to organise our societies.

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Often an image becomes a favourite because it’s so surprising. This is one of them. I often notice clouds, usually because of a shape, a shade, or a colour. In this case it’s the sequence which is so unusual. Any single one of these clouds would be pretty unremarkable on its own. Together they look like calligraphy. They look like letters forming a word or ideograms forming a sentence.

When I look at this again it inspires me to think about the importance of both context and sequence. Every experience we have has a significance and meaning which emerges, at least in part, from context and sequence.

I think that explains why we talk about “having a run of good luck”, or, the opposite, having a run of bad luck.

When one of your first experiences of the day is a bad one it can quickly colour the entire day. Same again with the opposite. Which is why it’s a good practice to start the day with deliberate, conscious good experiences – say listening to music instead of “doomscrolling” (the new word for reading bad news stories in your social media feed)

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