“To forget how to dig the earth
and tend the soil is to forget
ourselves” M.K. Gandhi

As spring comes close, as I walk through the park each day the words of Joseph Campbell I saw in a Picture Quote come to my mind: “The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe to match your nature with Nature.” Digging in the earth, for example, is natural and as Gandhi says “To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves.”

Here are a few examples in my daily life today how I matched my nature with Nature or did not. I was walking in the park across the street today on the bike path when I came across an elderly man standing in the snow next to the path saying out loud “I guess they forgot to shovel this area.” I was listening to the book on “The End of Wall Street” on my I Phone but I heard him and at first thought it was joking. As I was walking away on the path he kept talking. I turned to look at him, now standing on the bike path and noticed in his hand a blind man’s walking cane in his hand. So I went back and asked him if he needed help on the path. He told me that he could see better than I and was living at the Badger home for the visually impaired nearby. After that he said that he kept on talking and talking. Since he was walking extremely slow, I made a move to move on. He kept talking so I decided to walk with him for awhile. I got in a few words to make sure he was talking to me not just talking to the air and found out he was talking to me. I started to listen as he went on and on about his life moving to one part to another, talking slow but seamlessly. Once and awhile I would ask him a question, like what his name was, but for the most part just listened to his life, his family, his joys and sorrows, what he liked and disliked. He talked in a very visual manner, like when he was describing a scene from a movie he had saw many years ago. I decided the natural thing to do was to give up listening to my book on “Wall Street” and just slowly walked with him and listen.

When we got around the park and back to my house I had to say goodbye. I was confident by this time he was partially blind but knew his way back to his home. We said good bye, I told him to stop by my house anytime, especially if I was working in the front gardens and thus could see him walking across the street.

Another example, when I did not do what Nature would do, was when I received an email today from a friend telling me to “slow down” implementing a decision a group we belong to had made. I responded with more of a reaction sending my email to others involved in the decision making. Nature has taught me to let this kind of remark go but I did not. My desire to answer his accusations overcame my nature to just move on and be positive.

Oh well, “Man is made to mistakes” but hopefully I can learn from mistakes and from nature.

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