The immensity of peace, which only Silence provides: A short walk in the forest...
How, from the most apparent nothingness, a beautiful place; no doubt, but not at all out of the ordinary, begins to become peaceful, close? As if it were a refuge, I am referring to? There are certain questions that even I can't find an answer to? However, I still know that if I need a place in my world to disconnect and reorganize mentally, I have it. And I believe that this is the true spell that forests, or the vast expanse of parks and green spaces that almost every city possesses, have. They are natural lungs before the debacle of our societies full of carbon, lead and petrol fumes everywhere; they filter the stale air and make it infinitely purer?
But even so, this post in many ways is not so much about our pitiful pollutant footprint, which only forests ‘clean up’ adequately, no... But rather, to know that sometimes the best solution is silence. Walking for a few hours a day, after several months without doing so, and with the sounds emitted from that immense and powerful nature that is by my side. The echoes of birds are the atmosphere that accompanies whoever walks the wide paths that this beautiful ambush area has to offer. The rain brings good to nature, makes it heal, and revives it.
Every wound caused by the hot and dry periods of spring and summer has been duly "healed" thanks to water and photosynthesis. And that is the beauty of living in tropical countries. At one moment it seems that the sky and the countries are totally dry and devoid of life, and at another, the rain cycle works its magic.... I know this is an overly simple example but I too go to this lush and majestic forest to do the same thing: ‘heal’. While I don't need the rain to bring its nutrients to my body to make me green and beautiful again, what I do need from places like this is the power of silence in the face of vastness.
Sometimes what a person really needs is just to walk and emit nothing. Especially, if you live your days talking.... The routine of a good silence is something that in my country and in my city we don't really appreciate. There is too much noise everywhere and it's almost like a condemnation... So, to find these places where the eye loses sight of a horizon full of splendour and calm, is something that is all too closely related to having found a treasure. New Yorkers have their Central Park and they love it for a reason, and I think I know what it is.... It's a place to find meaning. I feel the same thing happens to me in my more modest, less famous park. I breathe its healthy air, I hear the melody of the birds in its trees and I'm not thinking about how boring my life is....
After a few years, life can be like that... Endless repetitions one after the other that rarely bring any joy. And since I was a child, I was very good at painting landscapes and large forests. They made me feel safe and at home... Elements, which fortunately I have improved. My home is my 9 year old daughter. Menda happiness, she makes me proud of her most of the time but sometimes that is not enough.... I don't regret anything and I wouldn't change anything. It's just that there are times when I feel closer to a Japanese ‘salaryman’, or a replicant from Blade Runner in search of a more beautiful meaning, that spark of energy and vitality that draws smiles on my face, but it simply doesn't exist, it doesn't come, it doesn't happen?
That forest, the one near my home, where my daughter always imagines that the little hands are going to steal her bike, is a place where I am going to do the opposite of what I am doing here. Here, the skill is to develop thoughts and show them in an original but certainly vulnerable way. There, in the forest, look at the horizon and just walk. Once and several times, no matter if I've already walked a path or a place twice. I walk, I observe, I smile, I recharge my energy and I recognise myself. This short story is a sample of what I am saying... Everything described here happened after leaving the office; absorbed by the boredom of a life that never stops repeating itself; a life that lacks emotion and where this working girl walks through a forest to find a glimpse of difference between the expected and the surprising.