Getting Out

Getting Out

    Almost as if I had been ready to move on, this article appeared on today's National Geographic site; it's a place called Sunday Stills and is worth a peek, not only for the thought-provoking articles that appear each week, but for the photographs that accompany them...think of it as a different way to catch up with the week's news.  At any rate, this particular piece dealt with --ready-- stress and your brain (as if you haven't read enough about that during these recent posts).  But in this piece titled This is Your Brain on Nature, cognitive psychologist from the University of Utah, David Strayer, argues:...that being in nature allows the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s command center, to dial down and rest, like an overused muscle. Writer Florence Williams adds: Our brains, he says, aren’t tireless three-pound machines; they’re easily fatigued.  When we slow down, stop the busywork, and take in beautiful natural surroundings, not only do we feel restored, but our mental performance improves too...In England researchers from the University of Exeter Medical School recently analyzed mental health data from 10,000 city dwellers and used high-resolution mapping to track where the subjects had lived over 18 years.  They found that people living near more green space reported less mental distress, even after adjusting for income, education, and employment (all of which are also correlated with health).  In 2009 a team of Dutch researchers found a lower incidence of 15 diseases—including depression, anxiety, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and migraines—in people who lived within about a half mile of green space.  And in 2015 an international team overlaid health questionnaire responses from more than 31,000 Toronto residents onto a map of the city, block by block.  Those living on blocks with more trees showed a boost in heart and metabolic health equivalent to what one would experience from a $20,000 gain in income.  Lower mortality and fewer stress hormones circulating in the blood have also been connected to living close to green space. 

    An unexpected visit from a cousin I hadn't seen in over 12 years brought along his wife and two young daughters.  And after a short time to catch up, I left with the same feeling of freshness from seeing the children.  Their playfulness and laughter, their loving cookies and plopping into their mother's arms when feeling tired (but doing so ever so politely) was surprisingly refreshing, even when one of them got scared when our dog wouldn't stop barking at her.  As with the nature piece above, I also think (at least for me in my humble and unscientific opinion), that other things are necessary for our brains to recharge.  Perhaps these things are all that are needed, that it really is all that might be needed to snap one out of a depression hole, much as the Dickens story with Scrooge.  Could it be something as simple as children laughing, or as scary as a life-threatening event?  Ironically, I found this "recharge" happening even as I was clearing the snow (our winter is returning to a normal one, with storms bringing in 15-22 inches of snow each time they pass), the light powdery spray blowing back in my face like a cold mist with each shift of the wind, successfully breaking through the tiny unsealed openings in my jacket and gloves, adjusting more quickly than my slow-moving hands could.  It was not at all upsetting but actually refreshing, as if a game, nature the child just toying with something as unimportant as tossing a bit of snow my way then quickly moving on.  The snow was everywhere, the piles on the ivy now in large mounds and ready to fall back onto my cleared path as soon as the sun arrived to join in the play (but I had learned their tricks long ago and now knock their mounds down well before I take the blower by).  But the trees above, the ones I could not reach.  Looking up, they appeared to be joyously smiling like the rascal child behind you, the one with the really large snowball that knows that you have run out of snowballs to toss.  Those mounds, and there were many, seemed to be waiting patiently until I had finished and had put everything away.  Before long, their loads would land as precisely as directed, onto the walkways and all to the consternation of those walking by wondering why I never cleared my sidewalks of snow.

     As a new year approaches, it's worth looking back once again, but this time with a new eye of how we might have seen ourselves and how we might have acted over the past 12 months.  Was it rushed or frustrating or exasperating, or was it carefree and wonderous and coming from a good place?  Okay, without painting a Disney-like picture, it was likely a grand mixture of both, muddled into something in between like a big pot of stew.  Our lives are like that, good days and bad days.  But overall, what would you rate yourself?  Mostly good, mostly bad, smack in the middle?  I guess looking back in such a way will only do good for anticipating how one might look forward.  Things can change...as I discovered, you can hit an unexpected wall and feel that despite your best intentions, you are trapped...but not forever.  Rest, a child's laugh, likely even a bit of nature playing with you, can bring you back around, or at least it seemed that it did me.  One never knows what the new year will bring...perhaps the answer to whatever question you might be asking is simply be open to the unexpected...it might be a wall, who knows?  But it might also be a drop of snow down your back, the chill just making it past the neck of your jacket.  And if you listen really carefully, you might just hear something you've likely never heard before...a tree chuckling ever so quietly, it's branches moving just a bit more than before.  When that happens, smile back...it's might only be nature recharging you.