Look for the Beauty

With so many abhorrent things being perpetrated by our current administration, I often think of this quote by Fred Rogers:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping'”.

She was teaching him a strategy to cope with fear and anxiety by focusing on human goodness rather than on the distressing event itself.

Spending time in nature with a camera in hand is my strategy for coping. Instead of looking for the helpers, I’m looking for the beauty.  For the two or three hours I’m out on a walk, I’m totally absorbed in the picture-taking adventure. There’s absolutely no room left in my brain for the scary things to seep in. Even without a camera strapped across my shoulder, time spent in nature is always time well spent.

A 2019 study in Frontiers of Psychology found that as little as 20 minutes a day immersed in nature can significantly lower your stress hormone levels. There is, in fact, extensive research across several disciplines including environmental psychology, neuroscience, and epidemiology that demonstrate the significant mental, physical and cognitive benefits of spending time in nature whether you’re in a deep wilderness, an urban park, or your own backyard. You don’t even need a camera to reap the benefits, you just need to be paying attention.

My picture walks have that effect on me. As soon as I’m out among the trees or near a body of water, I experience an immediate sense of calm, especially if I have my camera with me; it makes me pay close attention.  For the next few hours, I’ll be totally focused on all the things I see and hear, hoping for an interesting picture or a beautiful shot. It might be a colorful flower, a tiny bird, or an elusive butterfly. When I’m that absorbed with looking, and that absorbed with the whole process of taking a picture using manual settings, the world beyond the reach of my camera completely disappears.

When I arrive home and bring the pictures up on my computer, I’m once again transported to the wonder of it all: zooming in on each plant or creature to see the intricate designs on a butterfly’s wings or the colors around a bird’s eye; the delicate nature of a dragonfly’s wings, or the amazing construction of a spider’s web. It’s all so incredibly interesting.

Just twenty minutes a day…

spent in nature’s embrace…

paying close attention…

…can have a profound impact on your mental health.