The Nature of People

How can we come back to nature?

Written with Kittirat Yothangrong

Although human beings are part of nature, we have drifted away and forgotten who we are and where we come from.

People have changed due to technology around them, making everything so easy. However, although we have all these technological mod cons available to us, people tend to be lonely. The texting lady ignores what is around her, for what she may believe is more interesting and more important at the other end of a mobile phone. There is no time for those around her, the environment around her, and those who love her. She forgets the world, absorbed in her technological device.

Humans have forgotten their own humanity, shutting out love. They sit there on a train or tram, not smiling, failing to engage others around them, absorbed in their technological device which zaps away the essence of humanity.

When we go back to the past, where technology was simple, people had empathy, compassion, and relationships with each other. There was an essence of humanity within society where people relied on each other. Life was so much simpler then and people lived within their humanity.

Today people live within their purchased 'off the shelf' technology.

We have descended to a robotic like existence, where heart and feeling is gone, or reduced to a simply smiley on a screen, to express our unknown need for some love. Mobile phones have become the object of affection, rather than the means to communicate our affections to others.

We live in a world which is now very much a virtual world, not physically real, but surreal.

We forget nature, we forget the earth, sometimes never coming into physical contact with anything natural. It's easy to cheat and hurt others because emotions have been substituted for icons.

As a consequence or relationships are hot and tempered. We want only what we want, and tend not to care about other peoples' needs.

So how can we come back to nature.

We have to ask ourselves why were we born into this earth in the first place?

What do we want with our life?

Are we are born just to eat, sleep, make love, and go to the toilet?, or are we born to develop our life into something?

if we take the first choice, we take on the life of a creature no different from most animals. Our demeanor will certainly be a selfish one. Most people in the world are like this.

If we take the second choice, we are part of a very few who live a much more aware life about what is going on around them. They can see inside themselves and know their own feelings and how to exist in this world. people taking this second choice tend to have a much more peaceful and useful life.

So how do we take this second choice?

This can be done through developing mindfulness. And mindfulness can be developed by working on our breathing. This only takes about 10 minutes a day. breathing brings us back to nature and back to the reality of what is around us.

So next time you are on a train or tram, rather than get out your mobile phone to text, try using the time for breathing and discovery of your own body and the immediate world around you.

Originally published in Ovi Magazine 1st April 2014

KITTIRAT YOTNANGRONG or Akoi as she is known, is one of the very few people who have been a Buddhist nun and a runner-up in the Miss Southern Thailand Beauty Quest as a “mature” contestant. She is a ‘practical’ vegetarian who believes in herbs, healthy living, and meditation. An avid yoga fanatic, Kittirat is also an organic farmer. She regularly speaks to community groups in Malaysia and Thailand on empowerment, health through herbs, and spirituality.

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