Watch for the resources that flow your way, and that land like gifts at your feet.

Nature is such a creative gift-giver. With an endless palate to choose from and powerful forces at her disposal, her gifts can be as simple as a beautiful stone, as complex as a healing herb, or as extravagant as an unearthed treasure. 

Great rocks split open during earthquakes, exposing crystals hidden inside for ages. Trees topple in the wind, revealing gold coins tangled in their roots from treasure buried long ago. The riches of sunken Spanish ships wash ashore during storms, shaken loose by the waves. While you may never experience a stroke of fortune as dramatic as these, you can learn to see the natural forces at work all around you, offering up gifts and treasures at every turn. If a flower isn’t a gift, then what is?

If you stand on the banks of a river during a storm, you will see all sorts of detritus float by, both natural and man-made: Lawn chairs, water coolers, baseball caps, and car tires. Bird houses, squirrel nests, broken branches, and fallen trees. When the storm is over, all of these items, piled up like dams of garbage in the river bends, will be pulled out, and thrown away without much thought as to their value or usefulness. 

If you could peer back into time, and see that very same river during a storm from another era, there would almost certainly be someone standing in the same spot as you, amazed at their good fortune for all the free firewood just waiting to be pulled from the river. The same fallen trees that would be hauled to the dump today might end up in a woodpile or a workshop a hundred years ago. The difference between then and now is simply the difference in perspective⏤the eyes through which these resources are seen. When people made or gathered much of what they owned, it was natural to see logs in a storm as treasures. You can cultivate that same mindset today, even if you’ve never chopped your own firewood or made anything by hand. Whether you commute to work on a horse or a spaceship, you can train yourself to pay careful attention to the resources that present themselves to you. 

Think of the bird that plucks bugs from the grill of your parked car, or who drinks from the small pool of water that drips from your tailpipe on a hot summer day. You probably never noticed either of these resources until you saw a bird swoop in to enjoy them, but they were there the whole time, an offering for the birds. The same is true for you, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The things you need are right there, washing up onto the shores of your life, just waiting to be recognized as the starting materials, building blocks, and natural resources that they are. Some gifts are tiny; some are absolutely grand; but all are freely given.

Copyright 2024 Kesel Wilson (entirely, 100% human-created)

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