I wonder, sometimes, at the perfection of nature. How effortlessly it creates and destroys – how without discrimination it can ruin our lives. Yet who of us can say that we belong here?

As I walk, I see what nature has made. A flower lives and dies, just like that. We build things and they disintegrate in the elements before our eyes. We are persistent, we humans. Aren’t we? Coming up with better ways to protect our properties, but in the end it’s always nature that takes it from us. Is it any wonder that our own nature is to destroy things?

There is no material we can create that will not be foiled by nature… for if anything lasts beyond our existence on earth, nature will eventually destroy it, even if it takes the complete annihilation of the planet to do so.

What can we create that nature will not destroy? Where does our purity lie?

The answer must be in the things that we, like nature, create without effort. For some of us it’s music, or thoughts or words – ideas. If our nature is to create that which is beautiful, it is also ephemeral, as a flower.

We are born and we die. Like animals we have the innate will to survive; to perpetuate our species. We belong here every bit as much and as little as a flower. We are no better, and no worse. For even a weed can destroy concrete.

I can’t help but believe there is a great lesson to be learned from nature. The more effortlessly we live–the more we do what our true nature compels us to do–the more content we can be.

Nature doesn’t strive. It is.