Easier said than done: switch off your devices and just look at the world around you. Modern life has turned us into restless creatures, constantly jumping from one thing to the next. We are racing against the clock constantly, forgetting that we have only one life, that the world is beautiful, and that this particular day is unique – once it is gone, it will never return.
Then months turn into years, and we find ourselves saying sadly, "Time flies". But perhaps time is not the problem. Perhaps we are the ones who have turned life into a race – and now wonder why everything seems to be moving so fast. The Sun still rises and sets as it always has. Morning still arrives in the morning, and evening still comes in time for dinner...
Every now and then, we need to step away from routine and simply listen... to Silence.
No headphones. No background music. Just the space around us.
At first, that silence may even feel unsettling. We have become so accustomed to constant background noise that its absence can seem strange. But Nature has sounds of its own, and we should not shut them out. Let them become our music during this brief escape from everyday life.
Perhaps we will hear a marsh tit that has flown down in search of food. Somewhere in the distance, there may be the sound of flowing water or rain. I might feel a gentle August breeze against my skin – and in that moment, once again, understand something greater: life is infinite, and although I am mortal, my soul is Eternal.
Moments like these are increasingly bringing me back to life. And I admit that reaching that state can be surprisingly difficult.
Switch off my phone? What if I miss an important message or notification?
Spend some time alone? Do I actually know how to be alone?
Perhaps I am afraid of being alone in this world. But maybe I should stop looking at everything through the prism of fear.
If I switch off my phone for 30 minutes, nothing terrible will happen. If I spend some time alone, perhaps my mind will gradually become comfortable with stillness, allowing that sense of calm to spread naturally through my body.
Or perhaps my nervous system no longer wants calm at all? Maybe chaos has become the new normal – for me and for millions of people around the world?
There are so many questions. But I want to tell myself that I am not afraid. I want to step beyond the boundaries I have built around myself – the boundaries that have slowly turned me into a mechanism.
I really will switch off my phone.
I really will head into the mountains or walk through the magical forest beside piste No. 5.
Or perhaps I will simply go down to the resort’s sports grounds, look at the Prutets River, close my eyes and listen. Not to the artificial sounds that pour from speakers and devices every day, but to the sounds that were here long before them...
So when did I become a mechanism?
When did I begin living by someone else’s coordinates?
Was it when I forgot that I am a child of Nature?
And then I will scream.
Loudly. Very loudly.
I will close my eyes and dissolve into that moment, reminding myself once again that life is infinite and that although I am mortal, my soul is Eternal.
P.S. Listen to Nature more often... it truly heals.
Bohdan Krasavtsev, Head of the Sustainable Development Office at Bukovel Resort