One Leaf, One Moment: A Path to Peace

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We all want a path to peace. In this Navigating Nourishment Podcast, Wendy and Debbie discuss the poem “Not the End of the World” by Jeff Foster, emphasizing the importance of presence and mindfulness. They reflect on how paying attention to small, everyday moments, like finding a beautiful leaf, can reveal hidden beauty and ground us. They highlight the therapeutic benefits of nature, noting that being present in nature can alleviate anxiety and depression. They stress the value of intentional practice in staying grounded and suggest that fully observing and appreciating nature’s details can provide deeper healing than mere outdoor activities. They conclude by encouraging listeners to cherish moments and be more mindful and present in their lives.

Poem

NOT THE END OF THE WORLD

It’s not the end of the world. Just the end of a dream.

Let your heart break today. Feel your feelings. Your disappointment, anger, fear. Let all thoughts, pictures in the mind, voices in the head, have their say, and know they are only new dreams trying to take root.

And feel your feet on the ground. Bring attention back to the here and now. To yourself. Feel the morning sun on your face. The breath rising and falling. Hear the sounds all around you. The bird singing. The television blaring. The traffic, the chatter of children.

So much here remains unchanged. So much here is familiar. Life goes on. The sense of being alive. The throb and pulse of being. Your ability to love, to hold yourself in presence. To connect with others, friends and strangers. To embrace difficult sensations.

Don’t abandon yourself for a chaotic world. Recommit to your path today with even greater ferocity. Nothing is so bad when you stay close to the place where you are. Nothing is so bad when you touch your own power. Presence itself.

– Jeff Foster

Post recording, Debbie read Gretchen Rubin’s 5 List and it had two references that resonate with this podcast:

The other day, I saw a spider web lit up by the sunlight, and I was struck again by how easy it is to overlook the beauty of the world.
I remind myself: I admire nature, and I am also nature. I resent traffic, and I am also traffic.

The leaf pictures are from Debbie’s walks.

The painting of the leaf is by Wendy.

TRANSCRIPTION

edited for readability

Finding Beauty in the Mundane

Wendy 00:00

We found this poem recently, a friend of ours posted this poem, and it landed so beautifully for both of us, we wanted to share it with our listeners.

“Not the End of The World” by Jeff Foster

It’s not the end of the world, just the end of a dream. Let your heart break today. Feel your feelings, your disappointment, anger, fear. Let all thoughts, pictures in the mind, voices in the head, have their say and know they are only new dreams trying to take root and feel your feet on the ground.

Bring attention back to the here and now, to yourself. Feel the morning sun on your face, the breath rising and falling. Hear the sounds all around you, the birds singing, the television blaring, the traffic, the chatter of children.

So much here remains unchanged. So much here is familiar. Life goes on. The sense of being alive, the throb and pulse of being your ability to love, to hold yourself in presence, to connect with others, friends and strangers to embrace difficult sensations.

Debbie 01:48

It’s so beautiful. It wraps it all up so beautifully.

Wendy 01:55

It really does. It’s something to print and read often. This whole idea of presence can only be done with practice, intentional practice, it takes an awareness that really helps us become more grounded.

Just recently, I was on a walk with Dana and a friend of ours. It’s the middle of fall right now, and we were crunching leaves like crazy underfoot, and we were in this beautiful park, and she bent down all of a sudden and picked up a leaf, and it was just exquisite. What we pay attention to is so important. And when she stopped among all these leaves on the ground and she picked up this really beautiful leaf – it was so colorful. It was like someone painted it.

Nature is just so amazing. I mean, hundreds of brown ones all over. And then she found this one among all the brown ones that still looked alive, but it was on the ground. Then we all started looking for them, and then they were everywhere. I just thought it was such a good example of paying attention to the mundane and the everyday moments of life and what is truly cherished in front of us.

The Power of Pausing and Observing

Debbie 03:40

So true if you pause to look.

Wendy 03:43

Yes. IF you pause to look, and I think that’s probably why this poem was so rich to both of us. It’s really about the pause and the presence that we so often are distracted and don’t see the beauty around us.

The Extra Step of Mindfulness

Debbie 04:08

It’s so true because we hear about the fall every year you go look at the trees, or people go travel to go look at the trees, and a lot of times they stay in their cars, or maybe they take a walk to look at the trees, and they’re looking up at the trees and the beautiful changes. And I’ve been doing that too, but like you said, I’ve also been because I’m walking my dog, and at times he stops to sniff for quite a while, and I’m standing there, and that’s when I’ve been noticing those leaves that I wouldn’t notice if I didn’t take that pause like you’re saying. How many people who are trying to enjoy it aren’t really enjoying it fully, because they’re not out walking and pausing and looking at the leaves on the ground right?

So even when we are being mindful in so many ways, perhaps we can be even more mindful. Maybe, it’s like an extra step of being mindful, of pausing a little bit more or even shrinking our world a little bit more to where we are right this moment, right now.

Wendy 05:17

Yeah, I think that’s an important distinction, because we can talk about pausing, we could talk about looking up at the stars, but it’s, it’s that next layer, right? It’s that pausing for longer. It’s maybe even going to the body and saying, How does this feel? Like that leaf that she picked up looked like a painting. And when we started discussing how much beauty there was around us and having the conversation and naming it. We all were in awe. It was a really nice moment.

Debbie 06:03

That’s exactly it. And I know exactly what you mean, that it looked like a painting, because I’ve been doing the very same thing.

Wendy 06:11

Your pictures have been beautiful and what you said earlier about the pictures just don’t even do it justice.I love photography, and I know you do too. We love photography and it can be so amazing. Photography can really bring out emotion. But when you’re standing in the middle of nature, and it’s all around you, it can be really powerful.

Debbie 06:37

Because there’s such subtleties. And I mean, no camera is as good as our eye. You know our eyes when you hear about all those things, about all the crazy, millions of colors we can see, and you’re like, really, but that’s exactly what we’re seeing in the leaf that the camera can’t quite pick up, because it’s like, so there’s so many tiny, little subtle things, and that makes it the essence of such beauty.

And that makes me think about how nature provides so much beauty in the world for us, if we take that moment to stop, it’s not just in the fall, you know, it’s not just when the leaves are falling. It’s everywhere, all around, if we just stay still for a moment and stop. It makes me think of when my kids were little, especially my son, because he was, at the time, the only kid I had. And he would crouch down and look at bugs, and I would sit down and look at bugs with him, which I would never notice otherwise. But then I would look and see this huge world of insects that we just walk by every day. They have a universe, and so if you just take the time to stop and do that and appreciate the gifts that nature’s giving us, to make us be in the present and to be grounded. I think we’d all be better people if we did that more often.

Wendy 08:07

Yes, I agree. And I think, at the end of the day, perhaps that’s one of our biggest messages: When we nourish ourselves, we’re literally better people when we take care of ourselves in a really intentional way.

We’ve got clients who have shared some pretty interesting stories over the years about how they’ve treated their body in poor ways, either by not moving or indulging too much or drinking too much. It’s all a way of escaping what’s going on. And so much of nature brings us to the present moment and helps us feel things.

Nature’s Role in Grounding and Healing

And I think so much of the chaos in the world makes us want to run away from it. It’s very natural, that’s normal. But when we can be more present in the world and feel it, it can help us move through whatever chaos is going on. And I think that’s one of the reasons why we both really appreciated this poem.

Debbie 09:30

You’re bringing to mind another idea of how much anxiety and depression, like those rates have gone up considerably over the last years. And just as many studies have gone up saying how being out in nature helps depression and anxiety and all that stuff and it’s and so people who feel this depression anxiety say, Okay, I’m going to go for a walk. And then they come back and they say, I feel better.

Let me say this, just going for a walk, which is wonderful, and it’s great to do, especially if you have not done that, and you’re anxious and depressed and you have not been outside, get outside. But we’re talking about that little bit of an extra step, where, if they actually took the moments, like we’re saying, and stayed in one place and observed what’s around every day for five minutes. I think that would be more powerful than any drug they could ever take. Well, I

Wendy 10:37

There are many studies that talk about nature being the Master Healer, right?

Debbie 10:54

My point is that people think they’re getting outside and healing, where they’re putting their body outside, but they’re not fully really being in nature. And so that’s that extra step again. Be present, and add another layer of it. It’s a deeper layer of looking down from the beautiful trees and looking at the individual leaves. That’s what the poem talks about.It’s just more of a lesson of how we can be more intentionally present, and it’ll only help us.

Cherishing Moments and Being Present

Wendy 11:42

So we hope you’ve enjoyed listening to this podcast, and that you liked this poem. Cherish the moments a little bit more. I love that word, cherish.

Debbie 12:02

It’s a really good word.

Now we go forward, being present and mindful and cherishing what we have and who we are. And that’s the best advice I can give.

Wendy 12:17

It’s good advice, helpful. It’s very nourishing.

Debbie 12:23

That’s what it’s all about, right?

Wendy 12:26

Exactly.