Smell the grass🌿

There are a few rare moments that you can truly say were life-changing and set you on a different path.

One of them for me came from a personal development course I took at work. Or rather, from the conversations I had about it with my uncle afterwards.

This course was like many others; an invitation to all of us stressed-out office monkeys to slow down before we got an ulcer or had a nervous breakdown.

It wasn't anything groundbreaking. To summarise the whole day, it was basically meditation, but with a fancy name.

Slow your breathing and get back into your body by focusing on your senses instead of your thoughts.

What did strike me that day was how many seemingly successful and high-performing top executives, many of whom I admired as role models, were actually incredibly unhappy with their lives when they stopped to think about it (which is probably why they never stopped to think about it!).

They craved for more connection, for more time with their loved ones, and to feel that their life had more meaning than this.

And yet, they did nothing about it.

Caught in the trap of "when I have enough money, I can spend more time with my family," you end up chasing a moving target you can never reach. Because there's never "enough."

Pondering all this, I visited my uncle Manolo that evening and told him everything I'd learnt that day.

My uncle was wild, an untamable man more at home on top of a mountain than in a concrete jungle.

He wasn't the type to meditate or pray, and I wouldn't have thought of him as spiritual or prone to philosophizing.

He was a child of nature, in tune with the planet and everything living around him, even if it was just the tiny patches of green that cling to the corners of our grey cities, fighting to survive.

So as I told him everything I'd learnt, and my reflections on the day, he looked at me with a puzzled face and told me that he didn't need any of the tricks or lessons they gave us.

He felt he was the luckiest man in the world because he was so connected to everything around him.

When he stepped outside his house, he was surrounded by people single-mindedly rushing to the train, tense faces swept up in their thoughts as they hurried to meet the demands of the clock.

But when he stepped outside, he was immediately hit by the smells around him. Cut grass, fresh food from the bar, and the flowers blooming by the side of the road all hit his nostrils, and he breathed it all in with joy.

Where others just heard cars honking and sirens, he heard the birds in the trees and the rustle of the leaves in the breeze.

These moments of deep connection and immense gratitude for everything around him were available to him every time he stepped foot outside. So he didn't need any meditations or fancy science-backed exercises to tell him to be more in contact with nature. He just was.

That conversation was one of the rare moments in my life that were genuinely transformational.

It made me question how I lived my own life. I longed for connection, to be more at one with the world, but instead watched the seasons change and the sun rise and set from inside the windows in my office.

I didn't live that way because I thought it was the right thing to do, but rather because it's what everyone else around me did, and I let myself get caught up.

But my uncle gave me back the gift of choice, to understand that I could simply decide to live a different way. To smell the grass and hear the birds in the trees.

And the funny thing was that this wasn't anything new to me. It was just reclaiming what I loved the most as a child. I could spend hours just feeling the wet sand squish through my toes as the waves receded or lying on the grass looking at the shapes of the clouds.

Since that day, I've made it a daily habit to reclaim that sense of presence, of belonging to this planet and being one with every living creature.

I made it my mission to slow down and be more present, to climb trees and roll down grassy hills, and most of all, to dive much more.

Because underwater, when you slow your breathing to stay in place and see all the magical creatures that welcome you into their watery habitat, you can't help but be present. You direct all your attention to this one moment in life, so much so that time seems to stand still.

That's why it breaks my heart to see how being busy is worn as a badge of honour, and taking time to rest and enjoy the world is often judged as lazy or self-indulgent.

Yet we all struggle with anxiety, stress, and overwhelm from never being enough in this endless game of chase without winners.

This life is a gift; we don't get a re-run. And it could be gone in the blink of an eye.

It is our birthright to live a life where we can slow down, smell the grass, feel the ocean on our skin, and enjoy the simple yet majestic beauty of the world around us.

And that way, maybe we would be more inclined to protect its delicate balance.

As Khalil Gibran beautifully puts it, "Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair."

Sending you love,

Paula

P.S. Just like they now have workshops to teach children how to play because modern life doesn't leave them space for it, I sometimes think that the whole world needs to be retrained on how to nap, relax, and relish the feeling of the wind on our skin.

Maybe I need to create a workshop to teach adults to do less, be more, and live a more relaxed life. And yes, hammocks would be compulsory!