green things
Kourtney Jai
Ever seen a little bit of nature manage to push its way through the crack in a concrete slab? Kourtney Jai encourages us to slow down and embrace these little wonders, and see what they can offer us in our life.
There is a place not far from you. I haven’t been there, but I know it.
It’s just down the street, or maybe a few blocks away, or maybe just on the other side of downtown, with its shops and its lights and its Stop Walk Go Proceed With Caution.
It is the place where something green emerges from the concrete-asphalt-steel, where nature has reclaimed a small bit of its universe.
It is a single wildflower shivering over cracked concrete, a gnarled fenced-in tree that a city planner decided was old enough or pretty enough or interesting enough to stay, a vine trailing high along a red-bricked building, just out of reach of the constant to-fro of the humans below.
Seek that green thing.
When you find it:
| Pause |
Breathe deeply; breathe in the curiosity of the green thing. You are here, the tree rasps, the flower sighs.
Nod yes.
Listen to the way the wind whispers by, through. Imagine it catching on tiny shells, bells, pieces of driftwood tied up with ribbon to branches or stems. It sounds like the ocean or maybe your dreams, crashing crashing crashing against you, then pulling back, then crashing again, rising with the tide.
Watch life beget life—look on as ants navigate the wildflower, as a bird flies the sweep of the vine, as a whisker-cheeked squirrel shimmies along a tree branch, leaving a small shower of leaves and twigs in its chittering wake.
Maybe you pick up a leaf; maybe you don’t.
Feel. Feel something stir deep in that quiet, sacred, prismed place in your soul that feels like you. Maybe you feel something new, like a sprout emerging for the first time into a brilliant blue-sky spring day. Or maybe it is something dormant, like a tree blossoming again after a delicate, dark winter.
Do not shy away.
Feel. I do not know what the green things will tell you about the good, the hope, the magic that grows in your soul; the trees and the flowers and the vines will tell only you.
When you are ready, whisper thank you, no matter how soft. The whisper-wind will catch your words, your heart and take them where they need to go.
This is a place not far from you.
I know it.
And so do you.
Kourtney Jai is a lawyer, writer, and yogi currently living in the Bay Area, California. She has an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Connecticut and can most often be found staring out the window and wishing for rain.