nature's zodiac

Serving as a nightlight, the whole world glows slightly with the intricate patterns of stars. I gaze at it a bit after my boy and I read books at night. This spinning globe represents everything I know along with a greater infinity of what I don’t know. Somehow it contains all of this. 

The earth is a system, a beautiful and staggeringly intricate one. Its robust success in being home to life is due to its ongoing build of complexity. Evolution is the revelation of this upward build. My reflection on the globe is a result of eons of neuronal complexity building towards this quiet moment. 

I am a system too, and so are you.

What if there was no light, no air, no water, no earth. What if fire didn’t exist? These elements that we take for granted are tirelessly at work to create the life we are seamlessly a part of. They work together, or maybe in a more William Blake phrasing they “delight together” in creating this system we are a part of. 

A system is defined by elements working together towards a goal. What is the goal that surrounds us? What is the goal that we are all a part of? It is acceptable to think there is no goal, but is it practical or productive to think so?

Why does life continue to build in complexity? What makes us human? What puts us at evolution’s forefront?  These questions are practical and philosophical. There is room for critical thinking and poetry. 

I love the zodiac because, like the globe it elegantly portrays all that I know and an infinite more that I don’t know. Within the relationships of the seasons and elements lie the greater mysteries of life and experience. 

As creatures from the perspective of evolution’s forefront, we are free to consider these questions that pertain to the whole. We are free to feel incomplete and crave completeness. 

Yet we are not free to be apart from the system that is nature. It is not true that we, ourselves, are not systems.

In other words, alienation in and of itself doesn’t exist. Connection in and of itself, does.

Schedule a nature reading with me!