As I lay in my bed at CWM and watched in amazement each trickle of water running down my window pane, I could not help but look towards heaven and be thankful to be among the chosen.
I recall thinking how the rain had never been such a welcome sight and how it was a miracle that I had made it through the worst of COVID-19.
Gazing towards the misty mountains over Walu Bay and Lami I could not help but think of the ions, those free radicals, that hung freely in the air out there being lashed about in the gusts of wind waiting to be engulfed and provide life to another.
The newly-washed greenery made me lament at all the pure oxygen being produced in the complexity of each leaf, oxygen for which I now had to wear a mask for in order for me to heal.
Deep in thoughts of nature and our relation to it, I realised just how detached I had become from it. It dawned on me how it was the mere breath in me that was really the source of my life.
For what was my body without the breath! And there I was, having to wear a mask and breath in oxygen from a bottle when all around me it was really freely mine. The following morning I awoke to the tweeting of birds. That morning, I actually heard their song and felt their praises.
It dawned on me then how the birds lived for that moment, having no thoughts for tomorrow and as my gaze fell inwards again into my ward, all I could see were the sick and the dying. I heard no praise, no singing and no laughter.
There were a number of amputees, all with underlying NCDs, recovering from COVID-19. What a sight we all were in comparison to the birds.
Why couldn’t we be like the birds? In tune with nature, happy and content? We have most certainly lost our link to the healing properties of mother nature and have instead, transformed earth to a state beyond recovery.
Its about time we look ahead and try and save ourselves from despair and adversity by acknowledging and respecting and caring for our home planet.
I’ve come to realise that everything, and I mean every- thing, that we get and have is derived from mother earth, and yet we don’t stop to think about this deep enough so that is holds meaning. Instead we trash our planet, we pollute it, and destroy the very life that it brings us without the slightest of consideration.
We treasure business more than we treasure life! Humans will come and go but mother earth is here to stay and she will only be able to sustain us if we come to realise that our very existence is reliant on her being able to provide the essentials of life.
Our part is to make the critical change. Oxygen, water, fruits and vegetables, nuts and grains and the great outdoors in all its majestic creation, has been replaced by manmade products and consumables, sweetened and procured to suit our selfish lusts.
We have a lot to do in playing our part in protecting our natural environment, and its essential that government, the private sector, villages, suburbs, towns and cities, families and individuals, take heed and learn how to protect the very environment, that will protect us in return.
To be able to breathe freely again without an oxygen mask closer to my 30 days in was not only a true relief, but it was a wake up call for me that life and nature work hand in hand and that the very essentials for life can easily be taken away from me when I don’t respect nature or my natural being.
One of the greatest thinkers of all time, Albert Einstein, summed it up when he quoted:
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
It’s time we get closer to nature’s heart and break clear of our hectic schedules and unhealthy lifestyles and live our lives to its fullest glory.
SIMON HAZELMAN is a regular contributor to this newspaper. The views expressed are his only as he shares his personal ordeal with COVID-19 in Fiji.
