Happiness Is Losing Ourselves in Nature
The more fully we immerse ourselves in the natural world, the more human we feel.
One of the commonest findings by researchers interested in human well-being is that submerging ourselves in nature does us good. This should be obvious: we spent most of our history surrounded by it, after all. E.O. Wilson describes us as having a natural ‘biophilia’, a yearning to be among that for which we were made. But evidently it is not obvious, or at least the importance of nature for our thriving is not well understood. For if it was, we would spend much less of our time clumped together in big cities, sucking smog. Or, given a break from work, we would lose the phone and flee to the nearest park.
It is uncontroversial to say that nature makes us happy. Being in nature has been shown to boost our working memory, attention, mental flexibility and problem-solving; and these findings have informed several ‘ecotherapies’, from adventure therapy to horticultural therapy to blue space therapy. Shinrin-yoku (‘forest-bathing’) is another, resting on the notion that to be among trees is to be less stressed and happier, and to strengthen the immune system. The common claim is that the more we lose ourselves in nature the better we feel. ‘Soft fascinations’, such as passing clouds or rustling leaves, restore our attention by gently drawing it. Researchers say the benefits of being in nature increase as biodiversity does. Connecting to nature, moreover, can substitute for connecting to people: those who live near green spaces are less lonely and have a stronger sense of community than their peers in built-up areas.
‘Soft fascinations’ such as passing clouds or rustling leaves restore our attention.
Yet long before we could justify our fondness for nature with scientific research, its meaning and importance to us was understood well. We find in Wordsworth and Coleridge a deep appreciation of the natural world. We find it in Thoreau. The Romantic movement entailed a return to nature, or at least a restoration of nature’s proper place in the scheme of things. In the visual art of the age, people are awestruck playthings as set against the power of the natural world. In Caspar David Friedrich’s 1806 painting Landschaft mit Gebirgssee, we are drawn not to the farmer and his cows in the foreground, but the mountains that rise above the lake behind, their splendour increased by their faintness in the mist that hangs above the water.
The Japanese love nature so deeply that it is one of the most lasting parts of the national character. Some still believe pine trees to be holy, and often their festivals and holidays centre on natural change, like the coming of the cherry blossom. Traditionally, nature is the subject of haiku poetry, with Bashō’s ‘The Old Pond’ (’The old pond / A frog jumps in / The sound of water’) being the best-known example. It is equally common in Japanese visual art: we have all seen the much-copied picture of Hokusai’s ‘Great Wave off Kanagawa’. Family crests and heraldic badges in Japan frequently show stylised plants and flowers; flower-arranging has been elevated to a refined art; bonsai trees are lovingly shaped and tended to be scale representations of their bigger counterparts; and exquisite stone gardens were cultivated long before they became connected with Zen.
Family crests and heraldic badges in Japan frequently show stylised plants and flowers.
Our shared love of nature is reflected in more unusual, less obvious ways. One of the more interesting findings of researchers in the fledgling field of neuroaesthetics is that the kind of architecture we tend to find attractive evokes the natural world. In the documentary Built Beautiful, the neuroscientists describe how conventionally beautiful buildings remind us of open plains, while embellishment and ornament call to mind fruit hanging from trees and so the presence of edible food, which soothes us. They persuasively show that there is such a thing as beauty, and that it is a feature of the architecture we love. Classical buildings stress proportion and symmetry, principles that are basic to natural forms, in addition to the so-called Golden Ratio, which is widely found in nature. Some buildings, like the Pantheon with its central oculus, make use of natural light, so producing a dramatic, dynamic environment that changes with the time of day and the weather.
However much we try to forget it, we do not stand outside of nature. We are nature. We are as much ‘nature’ as a lake or a tree stump or a mountain range or a cloud. The word ‘environment’ reveals our vanity, for it puts us at the centre of things, and nature as that which is around us. It is more common of us to combine natural materials in such a way as to put a wall between ourselves and the kind of natural setting in which we feel at home. To connect to nature is to connect to ourselves. And more: it is to connect to our nature, not as plunderers of the natural world but as nodes in its great green network with the capacity—and therefore duty—to steward it.
