A Higher Power
Hello and good day!
It can be hard to cope with city life once you've spent a significant amount of time out in nature.
I don't know exactly how to describe it. Some things start to feel a bit trivial. If I had to take a hack at diagnosing what causes this phenomenon, I'd have to chalk it up to energy.
I recently attempted to read the book A Brief History Of Time by Stephen Hawking. It was way too technical for me to fully understand. But there was a discussion of the famous formula E=mc² that I was able to get my head around. And it reminded me of a recent interview I heard with one of the leading fusion specialists in the world.
Both agree that the best way to understand this formula is by acknowledging that mass and energy are essentially interchangeable. Mass is energy. And each unit of mass (m) has the speed of light (c) squared worth of energy in it.
The amount of energy in a quantity of mass is the amount of mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. If you square that, 186,000 x 186,000, you get 34,596,000,000. This means that each unit of mass has 34 billion 596 million units of energy.
Therefore, tiny pieces of mass have tremendous amounts of energy. And huge chunks of mass have incomprehensible amounts of energy. Nature is big and tall and broad and never ending.
What humans can build and make is comparatively very small. There is a vast energy differential between human civilization and mother nature. That is why I believe nature is the best place to get in touch with your higher power.
In no other place is the magnificent abundance of creative energy so easily observed. The picture was taken from a road on the way out to where we buy cacao. As you drive down this road, you feel great awe looking out either side of the car and realizing that the countryside stretches out to what might as well be eternity.
There are no roads through those hills and no airplane flights over them. If you tried to walk them, your body would give out long before the hills ceased climbing up in front of you over and over again.
About a week ago, I was in the small town my wife is from. The town is located fairly deep in the northern Andes mountains. On the outskirts of the city, there is a semi-tourist attraction called the "mirador", which translates to the "look-out". I say it is a semi-tourist attraction because very few people ever go to Celendin for tourism.
But if they did, the "mirador" would be on a list of things a person must do while in town. The mirador features a giant stone statue of Jesus. The statue is perched on top of a wide, second story balcony that is sitting on tall columns. To get up to the second story, you climb long circular staircases located on either side of the structure. From up on the balcony, standing next to the huge statue of Jesus, you look out on the city.
My wife must have mentioned to me a half a dozen times how much bigger and more modern Celendin is now, compared to when she was little girl. Back when she was growing up, Celendin didn't even have electricity. But on this trip, there was construction going on all over the place and a million little businesses had popped up.
It is a bustling little town.
However, from up on the balcony, you see these huge dominating mountains in the background of the city. Back behind those mountains are more mountains. And behind those, in the clouds, the black, curved silhouettes of more ridges. Behind those, ever so faintly, even more ridges, their shadows barely visible in the clouds. You can't see beyond that, but you know they are there, ridges that go on forever.
If you think about the progress inside the town while looking at the town from the mirador, with the town sitting there, so small and delicate, in a valley at the foot of the mountains, you realize that what humans create and what nature creates cannot even be considered in the same frame of reference.
Realizing this gives one a great sense of reverence and humility.
If you try your best and help as many people as you can, then you deserve to feel satisfaction in your work.
However, it doesn't make sense to get too full of yourself or think you are more than you are. Stand the most famous celebrities, or billionaires, or popular sports stars, or anybody with an undue sense of arrogance out in a mountain valley and look at them from a mirador.
That will show you the true nature of what we all are, small and fragile in the face of something much bigger and more powerful than ourselves.
Anyhow, I am running out of steam for now.
I thank you so much for giving me a moment of your time today.
I hope that you have a truly blessed day!
Adam
Click here for wonderful chocolate made with pure Nacional cacao.
Follow us on Instagram - @fortunatonochocolate