Recently, my social media has been full of photos of friends getting back to the basics of life. I’ve seen so many people taking walks in nature, beginning to bake bread and cook more detailed recipes, or chasing the sunlight as it moves about their home office. We’re drinking tea, noticing spring bursting forth, sitting on our porches, and longing for basic human connection.

You can say we’re all doing these basic, almost pioneer, activities because there’s nothing else to do. But I think it’s a little deeper than that. When everything else in our busy schedules and the hustle-for-profit-system we live in gets stripped away, I think we realize we’ve been craving the natural elements all along. We’re exposed to this truth through the feelings we get when we sit by the water or have the wind push us from behind or the way the sun shines on our face. We get glimpses of this too when we get our hands messy in the rich soil of the earth or feel our feet walking through the woods. These small, simple routines bring us back to the elements of life thus making us feel alive.

Baking, gardening, throwing a ball back and forth…all these activities are simple stimuli leaving us with enough time and mental space for contemplation, which in turn opens up our awareness of self.

Is it too bold to say the way we’ve been spending or time lately helps us best align with our inner self?

Perhaps.

And yet, in every conversation I’ve had in the last 3 weeks, I’ve heard a nod to this being true. It often begins with “I know things are rough and I’ve been worried, but I’ve also really enjoyed the slower pace, the break, the time with my family, the rest this is forcing me into.”

Of course, this is a privileged conversation for many of us, while other essential workers do not have the same liberty. I’m not ignoring that or the fear or the hardship this pandemic is causing so many.

Still I also believe it would be a shame if those of us who are at home with less busy schedules do not stop and question the system we’ve been living within, the system that’s come to a halt now. I think there’s enough truth here for us to think about and consider how we can apply these same more natural elements throughout the rest of our days.

Self Reflection Questions to Ask Yourself:

Before social distancing, how often did you have longer than 2 minutes to yourself? Once a day? Week? Month?
How comfortable are you with being along with yourself and thoughts? Why’s that?
How can you create a safe space for you to align with yourself? Where might that happen?
How can we add intentional times of stillness and silence?
When your world is still or silent, what feelings do you have?
What activity can we do that brings us past the voices of the world and allows us to hear our own?
What earthly element—fire, water, air, dirt, flour—connects you back to life itself?
When’s the last time you felt peacefully contemplative? What was the setting? What were you doing?
Has this been a priority in the past—spoken or not?
How can we prioritize it in the future?
If you listen closely, what are you hearing from your heart & soul lately? What is true and what can you let pass by?
Is there a way to bring the outside natural world into your space at home? How might you do that?
How can you responsibly enjoy nature & embrace the beauty of the earth around you?