I loved nature when I was young. I picked up flowers in backyard. I watched sperm whales and big red octopus in The Blue Planet. Both my surroundings and documentaries on TV told me that natural environment was beautiful and marvelous.
At the same time, I was frustrated to see people in my city drop litters in the river. I also heard news about pollutions and extinction. I thought humans were destroying the home of other creatures, doing harm to the planet, just like cancer cells. For a long time, I felt guilty for the environment: our existence has wiped out the beauty.
After a heavy rain, I was gathering fragrans that fell from branches. Dead worms emerged from soil, which I would take no notice of before. However, I was in contemplative mood this time. As I grew, I learnt more about the environment, such as the mass extinctions happened in the history of earth. These enabled me to reexamine my opinion. Nature is attractive indeed, but at the same time cruel. For long I have been ignoring the cruelty, chasing the beauty I depict in dreams. Bur in fact, living things in nature exist in a magnificent and vulnerable place, as well as humans.
Just like the words from The Nature of Joy: “We all have overlapping scars.”