Don't just live the length of your life - live the width of it as well.
Diane AckermanRead
We evolved as creatures knitted into the fabric of nature, and without its intimate truths, we can find ourselves unraveling.
Interpretation
Humans are inherently connected to nature, and neglecting this connection can lead to personal disintegration.
This quote emphasizes the deep relationship between humans and nature, suggesting that our existence is intertwined with the natural world. By recognizing and embracing the truths of our environment, we nurture our well-being, while ignoring these truths can lead to a loss of direction and purpose in life.
In practice
During a speech about environmental conservation.
Don't just live the length of your life - live the width of it as well.
We try to exile ourselves more and more from nature - not always consciously: We build houses; we dismiss nature; nature has to be outside, because we're inside. God forbid something like a cockroach comes inside, or some dust.
We ogle plants and animals up close on television, the Internet and in the movies. We may not worship the animals we see, but we still regard them as necessary physical and spiritual companions. Technological nature can't completely satisfy that yearning.
Because IQ tests favor memory skills and logic, overlooking artistic creativity, insight, resiliency, emotional reserves, sensory gifts, and life experience, they can't really predict success, let alone satisfaction.
American writer_x000D_ _x000D_ 1803-1882_x000D_ _x000D_ Play is our brain's favorite way of learning.
In rare moments of deep play, we can lay aside our sense of self, shed time's continuum, ignore pain, and sit quietly in the absolute present, watching the world's ordinary miracles. No mind or heart hobbles. No analyzing or explaining. No questing for logic. No promises. No goals. No relationships. No worry. One is completely open to whatever drama may unfold.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orch-ard white, Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night.
I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.
Life - all life - is in the service of life. Necessary nutrients are made available to life by life in greater and greater richness as the diversity of life increases. The entire landscape comes alive, filled with relationships and relationships within relationships.
Every cent we earn from Crocodile Hunter goes straight back into conservation. Every single cent.
Only when there is a wilderness can man harmonize his inner being with the wavelengths of the earth. When the earth, its products, its creatures, become his concern, man is caught up in a cause greater than his own life and more meaningful. Only when man loses himself in an endeavor of that magnitude does he walk and live with humanity and reverence.
The mountains seem to have conquered us long before we set foot on them, and they will remain long after our brief existence. This indomitable force of the mountains gives us humans a blank canvas on which to paint the drive of discovery and, in the process, test the limits of human performance.
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