It’s late Sunday afternoon when I arrive home. My friends have picked me up from the airport and after all my travelling adventures it’s a treat to be chauffeured home. It’s a beautiful day and winter has cast a lovely green over the suburbs as we make our way. I open the door and everything is as I left it, surprisingly clean and calm. Tonight I will sleep in my own bed and that is something we all treasure after travelling and the sleep deprived flight. I turn the water and power on while one of my friends waters the front courtyard garden and then moves to the back garden. He turns the hose spray on and suddenly there is a loud clarifying ‘pop’ quite near his head. We are all startled. What was it? I wondered if it was a wattle eater snapping close, but it was so fast. My friend Ric looks up and says, ‘I think it was a seed pod from the wisteria’. Astonished, Chris and I agree. Ric continues, ‘As soon as water touched it burst, releasing its seed’. Astonishing sound and action. New life waiting for the right moment and the element needed for survival. Water!
Today is the first day of spring in the European calendar and Djilba, the season of conception in Noongar culture. Spring is new life, budding plants, baby birds. All of which I have the great privilege of sharing this magical world with from my home which is surrounded by bush and bounded by ocean and river. I can walk along both to fill my heart and lungs with beauty and air, both of which are critical for my existence. Oxygen is deeply understood but beauty is not always considered a necessity. I think it is often thought of as a luxury. From my many travels, Nepal is the most different culture I have ventured to. Regardless of the altitude, isolated mountainous terrain or difficult circumstances, I saw evidence of beauty everywhere – in the presentation of food and drinks, clothing, buildings, and gardens. Beauty and aesthetic are essential for our humanity. Creating and crafting places to live and work profoundly affect our sensibility. We cultivate feeling through relationship to our environment. Feeling underlies relational life and our capacity to empathise and care for ourselves and others.
The most powerful feeling I have been left with after my long journey was kindness. The world is kind. People are essentially kind. I experienced it over and over again. I want to convey this so that we believe in the kindness of the world and others, as an antidote to the propaganda of fear that is currently circulating. It was a powerful force around me as I made my way from Australia to France, Ireland, returned to France and then home. My gratitude to every person and place that welcomed me with curiosity, wonder and kindness. It is there all around us.