You can spend hours on a beach or in a forest park. And such hours would be well spent. But we should bring our children with us. It’s too easy to leave them to their smartphones or gaming screens. They might be grumpy initially, but connecting them to the world around them would awaken within them their sense of spirituality and place. Technology tends to draw us away from nature and disconnects us from ourselves. Nature is like a mother to us. We shouldn’t turn our back on her. Connecting with the beauty around us reminds us that we are part of something much bigger than ourselves.
I remember plucking berries from the bushes with my parents. Sometimes we rose early to pick the mushrooms from the fields. I climbed trees, chased the hens, and chatted to the cows. I remember running after butterflies and blowing the seedlings off dandelion shoots. I marvelled at the tadpoles in a big bowl in Mrs. McGinn’s classroom and stuck leaves into my nature copybook.
It would be hugely beneficial if we taught children how to actively seek out and celebrate emotional experiences that move beyond a fixation with the ‘self’. We could help reinforce their connectedness to other human beings and their wider planet by ensuring that they didn’t always bring their devices with them. There would be some withdrawal symptoms and crankiness, but children would potentially feel a deeper unity with the earth and a sense of wonder and awe – two powerful positive emotions.

