Photo credit: Emma Kidd

As I walked outside today I was admiring the vibrancy of the yellowy-green-ness that is displayed on the trees here at the moment. In a sunshine fueled surge of Spring-ing into action, they are dynamically releasing all of their new leaves into the open air. I noticed that the leaves had a very tender quality of expression to them in the way that they were hanging from the branches. They were sitting there tentatively, as if still not fully awake yet. Still forming themselves, not yet bold enough to assert their fullest presence. I was drawn to touch one of the leaves, and an utterance of surprise and of joy leapt out of my mouth as I did so, as the delicate infancy perceived through sight was reconfirmed in touch. The leaf was so thin, fine and felt like flimsy yet rubbery plastic tissue paper. It felt astonishin. I guess my fingers are used to the feel of older, firmer leaves, and even though could sense that their was a difference through sight, it was a new and surprising experience for my sense of touch.

Photo credit: Emma Kidd

Today, as well as admiring the new tree leaves, I was also revisiting some notes that I had taken whilst watching a screening of “The Ecology of Mind” by Nora Bateson at Schumacher College this Spring. The film is a documentary about her father Gregory Bateson. To illustrate the essence of the wisdom that I took away with me, here are some quotes I noted from Gregory speaking in a variety of clips during the film:

The thing is not a thing.

Stand back and perceive in a different way.

The major problems of the world are in the differences between how nature works and the way people think.

Without context, words and actions have no meaning at all.

We live in a world that is only made up of relationships.

Pathology is in the pattern of relationships between, not in the individual.

The division of things into parts tends to be a convenience.

The ‘difference that makes a difference’, is a way of describing contrast AND a process of understanding relationships.

What is the pattern that connects?

Floating in a world that is nothing but change, only in the creation of change can we perceive something.

Any attempt to lock down process becomes an abstraction.

With a correction to our epistemology, you may find that the world becomes more beautiful.

The perception of separation is an illusion.

You are set free from material and logic terms when you are trying to think about living things.

Commerce and politics are defaults of the mistakes in our thinking.

Quoting Heraclitus – “No man can step in the same river twice.”….Just like no one can kiss the same person twice, pick up the same baby twice, or touch the same leaf twice – everything is in process.

 Photo credit: Emma Kidd