Paying Attention
Written by: Whitsett Boogaerts & Lamario J Williams
Green
The next time you are walking outside or traveling in a car, try to pay attention to the world around you. You will quickly notice how much of your visual surroundings are dominated by plants. In the southeastern US, especially during spring and summer, green is the color that paints almost all of one’s visual perception. With a little attention and understanding, the reasoning behind this color becomes quite remarkable. The green you see is light reflected from a pigment called chlorophyll inside plant cells. Chlorophyll is the molecule which captures light from our nearest star, the Sun, 94 million miles from Earth.
Chloroplasts
Plants use light energy to fuel compartments inside their cells known as chloroplasts, which produce ATP, the common currency of energy in all living cells. By taking in water, CO2, and nutrients from the soil, plants produce sugar for themselves and release oxygen as a byproduct. Without this incredible process we call photosynthesis, the oxygen we breathe and the food we eat would not exist. Life on earth would be nearly impossible.
Chloroplasts in plant cells
Moss
Observation can be a great tool in certain disciplines such as science, but it also serves to provide us with everyday moments of appreciation and astonishment. Viewed with a little curiosity, the most ordinary organism becomes incredibly fascinating. The next time you see a clump of moss in your yard, on a brick or in a parking lot, look closely and observe it. What you will typically notice is some small, reddish stalks rising above the green carpet of moss. These stalk-like structures have capsules at their tips, full of spores - which indicate the impressive evolutionary history of moss. For most of its 4.5 billion-year history, Earth was a barren place. Green organisms had not come out of the oceans. The land would have been a dark, colorless environment. Then, around 470 million years ago, photosynthesizing organisms began to colonize land.
Green moss (Tortula)
Green moss belongs to a group of plants that are the most closely related to these first colonizers. This led the way for green life to dominate land as we know it.
Moss spore capsules
Moss spores
Visual Meditation
Observation can also be utilized as a form of visual meditation. In the book, How to Use Your Eyes, author Dr. James Elkins advocates for everyone to look at everything with more patience. He states we should “keep looking, until the details of the world slowly reveal themselves.” When given the attention, the details in the common things and even in the rare things can be invigorating to ponder. The shades of green seen in nature can become redundant, but the biodiversity is incredibly vast. However, when plants use brilliant colors in flowers and fruits, it can make one appreciate the scale of evolutionary design to develop traits like so. Observational meditation of nature and plants can be quite invigorating. Elkins has stated: “the world – which can look so dull, so empty of interest – will gather before your eyes and become thick with meaning.”
Mindfulness
Lotus (Nelumbo) flower courtesy of imagessays
The lotus flower is culturally important for many different perspectives across the world, in particular for Buddhism and Hinduism where it represents purity and spiritual beauty. The lotus plant grows from muddy pond-like water, but the flower rises above the mud to bloom, which symbolizes enlightenment. Buddha, who was born Hindu, heavily emphasized meditation and mindfulness throughout his life. There are many explanations and perspectives for what mindfulness means, but we believe it boils down to this quote from Rupert Gethin: “an awareness of things in relation to things, and hence an awareness of their relative value.” Mindfulness of nature and plants can help us appreciate the value of this beautiful green earth we are on, but mindfulness in general can aid us in prioritizing our thoughts about what is most important and relevant in life. The ancient meditative practice of yoga includes a pose called the lotus position which targets reaching high levels of consciousness in order to rise above the murky thoughts of everyday life.
Lotus (Nelumbo) flower courtesy of imagessays
Buddha most likely had a vegetarian-type diet, partly because of the principle called ahimsa which promotes non-violence. There is even the belief that the natural world possesses sentience, which affirms the respect and compassion Buddhists have towards nature ensuring to not be exploitative or produce excess waste. This parallels the view of panpsychism which contemporary philosopher Dr. David Chalmers supports, not ruling it out as a possible answer to the mystery of consciousness. Scientifically, it can be argued that plants are sentient, as Dr. Stefano Mancuso and Alessandra Viola articulate in their book Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence. Part of the rationale behind calling plants intelligent is because they are capable of sensing their environment and reacting to it, a type of problem solving that is profoundly efficient. This isn’t to discount the complexity of the central nervous systems that have evolved in humans and many other animal species as pointed out in this Gizmodo article by Sofia Quaglia. Nonetheless, perhaps the survival skills of plants indicate that they can exercise a degree of mindfulness.
“The Great Outdoors”
“Indoors” is really such a recent invention in the timeline of humanity. Dr. Ming Kuo, a professor at the University of Illinois, studies the effects of nature on humans, particularly the negative effects of urban environments lacking greenery. In a Hidden Brain podcast, E. O. Wilson was quoted as saying “organisms, when housed in unfit habitats, undergo social, psychological, and physical breakdown.” Nature is perhaps a critical component for humans to be mindful. Potentially, seeing more plants will encourage a form of breathing meditation. There can be moments of mindfulness in considering that because of photosynthesis in plants creating oxygen, we can fill our lungs with deep breaths.
Environment
Sky night Petunia
When a flower doesn't bloom, we never blame the plant. There are almost always questions like: "Is there enough light?" – "Does the soil have enough nutrients?" – "Is the temperature appropriate?" But we never blame the plant for a flower not blooming. Resilience heavily depends on the environment. However, a legitimate concern is if the environment can't be changed, then it is important to note that a critical part of resilience is coping. Healthy coping isn't typically the default, but it must be cultivated over time. This is not to discount how strong the negative effects of an environment can be. But for survival, healthy coping must be prioritized.
Morning glory (Ipomoea) flower courtesy of imagessays
The things we take for granted daily and view as ordinary usually have deep, complex stories to tell. By paying a little more attention, and having a deeper understanding, the world around us becomes a world filled with awe.
Water lily (Nymphaeaceae) flower, one of the most ancient lineages of flowering plants. Photo courtesy of imagessays
Camp McDowell, AL
Fig (Ficus) tree, the first plant ever cultivated
Red hot poker (Kniphofia) plant at Aldridge Gardens
Special shoutout to Ashu Mukkavilli for her input on Hinduism and Buddhism