Why do we call her “mother” nature?

It’s more than personification. It’s a symbol. A mother—the one who births us—is a guide, a teacher for her child.

And nature, too is a guide, teaching our soul how to live. I used to think of nature only as a mother that bears us longer than a physical mother.

But there’s so much more likeness between mother and nature.

A mother is always there for her child, willing to listen and help without passing judgements. She’s patient and all-enduring, even the odd misbehaving child.

Nature bears with us despite every thing we do to her. We dump garbage on her, pump our waste on her hair, drill deep into her being searching for wealth, and yet, not once does she punish us for being as we are and doing what we do.

Sure, life isn’t always a walk in the park. Like my mom, nature has bad hair days, too. And sometimes the wind blows hard on our relationship, shaking pillars we’ve built over the years. Regardless, every catastrophe, every hard-to-face situation is a lesson for life. These incidents teach us to acknowledge and accept the bad things, just as we crave and cherish the good ones.

Looking back at the aftermath of those rough times, we can learn to amend our mistakes. For when we reflect from her perspective, we’ll see how much we’ve abused her selfless kindness. We’ll realise how we drove her into venting her frustration on us. Maybe we triggered a long-suppressed volcano of disappointment.

Just as we mature, so do our spiritual and physical mothers. We often forget that. Just as leaves, the hair changes, as seasons, the moods evolve, and then she becomes less intriguing to us.

Mothers don’t punish their children for bad behaviour, but even they have tipping points. And it often takes a breakout for her to get our attention—a reminder that we should spend more time with her. A reminder to call on her more often and listen to her. Because, once we’re grown up we forget how much we relied on our mother—how much we loved playing in the sand, dipping our toes in the river, and dancing in the rain.

A mother is an embodiment of everything we live for. We should preserve that relationship.

Let this mothers’ day be a happy nature day as well.

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Thanks for this week’s muse, Kumud and #SpiritChat