February 26
In the quiet contemplation of great nature the troubled mind finds peace; the order of the whole stills one's own unrest.
Views of Nature (freely rendered)
Listening mode
In the quiet contemplation of great nature the troubled mind finds peace; the order of the whole stills one's own unrest.
There is a kind of calm that comes not from a problem being solved but from its growing smaller. You think of something that has lasted for millennia, of distances you can no longer imagine. The worry that has occupied you since morning loses weight. That does not solve it. At this scale there is simply hardly any room left for it.
This relief is real, but it comes with a condition. The scale that shrinks your unrest shrinks everything else along with it: the letter you are looking forward to, the promise you made to someone, the person you worry about. An order that calms you because it does not need you does not need anything else from you either.
Perhaps that is why you can never bear this view for long. You borrow it for a while, like the view from a tower, and then go back down the stairs.
Down below, the worry is as big as it was before. So is the letter.
