Love myself, love the forest.

“Eastern medicine treats a human not separately but as a component of a surrounding, both lively and inanimate nature. Between the human body and the nature, bearing in mind its wise communing and understanding, it becomes a benevolent guardian of the organism, feeding and making it stronger through the lifetime.”[1] – Vladimir Badmaev “Chi, Schara, Badahan. Principles of Tibetan Medicine.” 

By quoting the above lines I would like to draw your attention to the importance of nature in our everyday lives and well being. Quick pace, noise, poisoned air, greyness of surrounding concrete kill us – with the tools – civilization diseases, among many of them cancer, depression, autoimmune diseases. Scientists have proven that people living in green areas are less stressed. Moreover, there is a lower chance of suffering from depression, diabetes, asthma or thrombosis. “Let’s take for example a window view: people who can enjoy the view of trees and grass recover faster when hospitalized, have better school results, are less aggressive, although they live in a shady neighbourhood.”[2] Nature may improve creativity even by 50% and forest walks help in lowering stress hormones by astonishing 16%.[3] Therefore, we should think carefully before we cut down another tree to make a toilet tissue out of it. By destroying nature, we destroy ourselves. It is not a cliché, it is a scientifically supported statement. In Finland for example, patients are given a prescription with a forest walk as a medicine. In South Korea special forest are arranged for workaholics. 

We should definitely protect the areas of greenery that are left in Poland. We should not litter, not burn, not cut down, not kill. A forest is a provider of two indispensible factors, factors without which we will not survive: oxygen and balance. We must learn to live in harmony.

No harmony = no peace. No calmness means no health. 

We do not have any influence on the speed of life. We would all have to give up jobs in fancy offices and start farming or gardening. Undoubtedly, it would be healthy but extremely utopian in our industrialized reality. We may, nevertheless, take care of forests so that they could give us relaxation after a hard business day full of computer work and telephones calls.

Let me finish with the words uttered by the Pope Francis who encourages us to ecological conversion, a conversion which is not only available for a narrow group of “nature lovers” but it should consider each of us and our regular habits.[4]

He said: 217. “There are more and more (…) external deserts, since internal deserts have become so vast. Ecological crisis is a challenge for a profound internal conversion. We have to admit nonetheless, that some engaged Christians and religious people, on the pretext of realism and pragmatism often mock the concern for the natural environment. Others remain indifferent, unwillingly changing their habits, becoming internally inconsistent. They lack ecological conversion, which is about dealing with all consequences resulting from meeting Jesus in relations with a surrounding world. Life is a vocation to be defenders of God’s work, life is a significant part of an honest being not something optional, nor a secondary element of Christian experience.”.

Let’s respect nature, as this way we respect ourselves.

Please find below a forest in different shapes and seasons. Look, feel the calmness, feel the force, feel the harmony.

Biebrza National Park, fot. Paulina Jarkiewicz

Biebrza National Park, fot. Paulina Jarkiewicz

Biebrza National Park, fot. Paulina Jarkiewicz

Kraków-Częstochowa Upland, fot. Paulina Jarkiewicz

Karkonosze Mountains, fot. Paulina Jarkiewicz

Karkonosze Mountains, fot. Paulina Jarkiewicz

Karkonosze Mountains, fot. Paulina Jarkiewicz

Karkonosze Mountains, fot. Paulina Jarkiewicz

Knyszyńska Forest, fot. Paulina Jarkiewicz

Knyszyńska Forest, fot. Paulina Jarkiewicz

Romincka Forest, fot. Paulina Jarkiewicz

 

To better understand the nature of trees I recommend the book „The hidden life of trees“:

 

[1] Translation from Polish version.

[2] “Nature for prescription”; National Geographic Polska, issue 1 (196), Jan. 2016) -translation from Polish version of the column.

[3] ibid

[4] A papal Laudato Si Encyclical on a concern for a common home. Translation from Polish version of the document