I wish I could share more pictures with you because the nature around me is so beautiful. I created an account on tumblr and I might try to send a link here, so you can see something from my little world. But I am not sure if the link will be approved. I’ll try later.

It is finally raining. It is good because everything was so thirsty. And the birds are singing. ❤️ It’s music for my heart. I love spring.

I will never allow my past and childhood to define me and destroy my relationships with my family. ❤️ We are here and now. 🙂

I spent my holiday in a location with heavy industry. Coal used to be mined there for a long time. The nature was completely decimated in that part of the area. It used to be a terrible sight to see… those bare fields of black earth… But today, just a few years after the mining stopped, everything there is beautifully green again.

I like how nature can cope with suffering… It’s literally wiped out. But still, it appears… a tiny leaf here and there… and in a few years, a beautiful dense forest. The resilience of plants, especially trees, is fascinating.

When we had to fell one of the apple trees in our garden, we found out that its trunk was literally eaten inside by ants. They used the apple tree as their home. I might sound stupid, but I was thinking… Was it painful for the tree? Are trees able to detect pain? I mean, they don’t have a brain, but there are many chemical processes going on inside trees, too.

I think she (the apple tree) made a perfect home for the ants. In my language, we assign grammatical gender to things and to the trees, of course, too… for example, an apple tree, a birch or a willow are women… and a spruce or an oak are men… And you can tell the difference… look at a willow how feminine it is with its thin branches swaying in the wind, and then look at an oak… what a big, sturdy man!

But in English there are playful games with language, too. I sometimes watch videos by Reflections of Life on youtube and I remember a nice quote from one of these videos…

I am not a ‘self’. I am an… ‘exploring’.

I really liked that idea and smiled when I heard it. … I am exploring… a little explorer of life… nature, people, feelings, emotions good and bad, tender and harsh… that’s the joy of life for me….observing, exploring, accepting, but not identifying… “I am more than suffering. I am more than one emotion.” (Hanh)

Maybe the apple tree was in a lot of pain… but she served as a refuge for the ants. She is a beautiful example of the art of suffering… I often think that we are unfortunate that we do have the brain, because it makes our life more complicated … judging, blaming, regretting, … but it gives us a freedom which a tree doesn’t have and that is the ablity to decide… decide to accept, decide to NOT identify with this or that, decide to change, decide to move on.. decide to be happy…

Thank you apple tree! 🍎 🤗