Beyond Good and Bad

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There is something deeply unnatural in how we divide and classify all that we see. For example, when we look out over the ocean, we trace a line where the sky meets the water’s edge.

It may look like a boundary – a firmament – but it is actually a merging.

As the sea shimmers beneath the sun, it begins to rise – evaporating into the sky. Water is carried upward until it becomes clouds, then, rain.

And where does the rain fall? Back into the ocean. Or maybe onto a mountaintop, into a river, and eventually – still – it finds its way back to the sea.

The water and sky are in constant communication, exchanging pieces of themselves as one becomes the other, and back again.

If we can see beyond our illusion of boundaries, we can begin to detect life’s interconnectivity and remove our sense of separation from the world around our sense of us.

A lot of the lines we draw aren’t as fixed as they appear. We make judgments – calling one thing beautiful, another ugly; we see one event as beneficial and another as disruptive.

This need to classify limits how we see ourselves and each other. It closes the door on our ability to see life’s endless possibilities.

Nature has no boundaries, and in its interwoven tapestry, it is only focused on balance. And yet, it doesn’t need to do anything to achieve this balance.

Like the seasons, when anything reaches an extreme, it simply turns back.

Oblivious to what we might label as good or bad, everything has a purpose. The soil will nourish the rose and the dandelion alike. Rain replenishes the grain fields as much as it nourishes the nettles. The sun warms an orange orchard and the wild tangle of scrub brush equally.

Where we see hierarchy, nature sees only continuation.

On the forest floor, we may see decay – a fallen leaf, fungi growing from a pile of broken branches. But these very things will become the foundation for new life. Without rot, there would be no renewal.

The ‘ugly’ work of decomposition is what makes springtime blossom. What we call waste or the end, is actually the beginning of a new cycle.

The flowing river doesn’t discriminate – it carries rocks, blossoms, seeds and silt to where they are needed.

In a meadow – sprawling and untamed, we can witness a quiet lesson about judgment. Wildflowers scatter among towering oak. Grasses bow and rise to the tempo of the wind. Thorns grow beside soft petals without favor.

No single lifeform claims superiority, yet together they create balance richer than any single entity could achieve.

We divide the world into opposites as right or wrong, useful or useless. It may serve our need for control, but it doesn’t reflect the truth of nature. The natural world resists our categories. It insists that every form has a place, that endings serve beginnings, and that nothing is wasted.

Perhaps that is why nature can unsettle and release us. Its indifference refuses to flatter our preferences. It offers no consolation for what we might see as destruction, no condemnation for what we reject.

Storms simply move moisture from one area to another – balancing temperatures across the earth.

This is the easy lesson from nature: our judgments are misinformed. Life is not a contest of worth, but a continuum of belonging. To see the earth as it sees us is to recognize that what we judge as useless or broken is in fact, meaningful.

Nature does not ask for our approval. It asks that we understand it’s ways. And in doing so, we may discover what the earth has been teaching us all along: that everything belongs.

To live without the constant weight of judgment is not to abandon discernment, but to soften our grip on extremes. When we rush to name something good or bad, perfect or flawed, we cannot see life’s deeper meaning.

Nature shows us that it reveals itself in time, often in ways our first impressions cannot predict. The end ushers in beginnings. Uncertainty clears the air. Weeds heal the soil and even become our medicine.

If we can meet existence as the earth does – without haste to condemn or exalt – we leave room for the moment to explain itself. We allow what is before us to reveal its place in the larger whole. In this way, nature teaches us radical patience: the humility to witness life as it is, not as we what wish it to be.

Nature can remind us to live with ease – not to struggle or force our way into the world – but to blossom from the inside out.

Watching the effortless way nature exists, can renew our faith that life knows where we belong, and holds a special place for us.