Horizon

Have you experienced nature? If I ask you to close your eyes now and imagine yourself to be in nature, where would you picture yourself to be at?

I’ve had a most wonderful experience last weekend; floating on a running stream with some greenery around when it was drizzling lightly. The cold stream water flowing around me, raindrops falling on my face, a slight glare of sunlight pierced through the canopy of trees above me. With my ears in the water, I can only hear the sound of the stream flow. How tranquil and serene it was!

Being an urban chap, I’ve very little exposure to the nature. I have only read from books bout how trees whisper mysteriously, rivers gurgle happily, mountains stand majestically, caves echo scarily…
I wonder whether writers and poets alone have those colourful imaginations, or everyone has it but it just that they have not experienced them before.

One of my friends once asked me: do you think that you can live on an isolated island, where no technology can be found? “Maybe,” I said. Always having tv, computer, internet, shopping centre, cinema, bowling alley, even mamak stall around, I’ve never thought of a life without them.

Can running up and down a hill, lying in bushes, admiring how the flowers bloom, looking at sun-rise and sun-set, counting stars, wading in stream, swimming in the sea… replace all the exciting activities in city?

But thinking deeply, weren’t our ancestors all live without all our current technologies? Didn’t they survive? Had they no fun and happiness? Do we actually need all the modern luxuries to be happy and we call owning them as enjoying life?
Sometimes, I will think that things may be better if they are much simpler. Science and development might have made our work easier but I wonder if they’ve actually complicated our life.

Anyway, it does pay to blend into the nature at times. There is so much to learn.
Do stop to smell the flower…