The other day, I had one of those small but significant aha moments. I realised that if I stopped to continuously look for tiny gestures of approval from my surroundings but rather paused, took a couple of deep breaths, turned my attention inward, asked myself what I needed and did that instead, be it brewing a coffee, a time-out on the porch or a walk in the woods, I could embrace a lighter existence and forge happier relationships with those around me. I scribbled down my thoughts lest they slipped my conscience. ‘Permit space. Beware of distance.’ As I remained conscious of this new mantra in the days that followed, I experienced a powerful change in both body and mind. I was suddenly breathing more easily and smiling more often. I heard the distinct melody of a mountain stream and wondered at the first ripe blueberries’ intense blue colour. I enjoyed solitude and marvelled at the beauty of people. Invincibly self-sufficient, I had never been calmer, kinder, more present.

Over the last couple of years, I have observed that I have trouble taking such instantaneous revelations as the one described above seriously. I would articulate my thoughts and share them with Sam who would nod and add a smart or funny sentence or two yet immediately I would begin to wonder if I was, in fact, a fraud. Shouldn’t wisdom be gained from rigorous and systematic study, not the way one stumbles over a branch in the woods?

As I contemplated my latest insight and its unannounced arrival, I remembered an article I had read not long ago. Or perhaps it was two articles? Either way, the message that resurfaced had something to do with climate change, how we talk about it from the perspective of human years and how nature doesn’t keep time the way we do. A millennium or a year matters little to the Mother. She is, after all, timeless. Whether we melt all the Arctic ice in a year or a decade, she will respond when she must and will care little for our challenges to prepare for this or that disaster in just a day. She will respond when the time is right.

I also thought of the Floodplain and the river as a metaphor. In particular, I contemplated waterfalls and how we don’t discard them for being too reckless to be taken seriously. We marvel at the force of the free fall of the water liberated from the confines of the riverbed. And as we walk further downstream, we cannot ignore the waterfall that was either. Without it, the river wouldn’t have reached where it did, wouldn’t have been quite the same. The waterfall is an integral part of the river’s unique identity.

In the same way, insights, unpredictable, serendipitous and forceful as they are, are no less credible for that. When overheard conversations and observations of human interaction, words and sentences, bits and pieces of songs, atoms and sparks accumulate in a particular manner, when they reach a tipping point at which making a mental leap is unavoidable, wisdom happens. It is frustrating, perhaps, that we cannot grow 1 unit of it per day. That we cannot schedule neither the progress nor the completion of the process. But perhaps learning does not lie in hustling towards some unknown final result, whether we call it divine wisdom or nirvana, but rather in accepting that if we keep our minds open and don’t rush what cannot be rushed, those sometimes little, sometimes life-altering realisations will eventually crystallise into words. And we only need to trust ourselves enough to accept them for what they are. Our invigorated Self.