Sometimes it’s hard to know what’s real. It’s hard to know who to trust.
Weirdos in the thing they call the manosphere who groom men into poisonous misogyny. Billionaires who have no problem getting richer while single mums bring up their kids in the back seat of a car. Political leaders who bomb houses where babies live. News sources that are biased. Algorithms that track you like some creepy digital stalker. Women murdered by their partner or ex-partner. Children hurt by the people who were supposed to love them. One man living in a $35 million beachfront mansion, another living on the beach in a swag.
It feels sometimes like the world is lopsided. It feels like we are in danger. It is no wonder most of the modern world lives in a constant state of panic. We live in a world that is hyperfixated on wealth and consumption, on beauty and achievement. It tells us we are less than. That we are not enough. While over three billion people live in extreme poverty and malnutrition, others use a medication to stop them eating. It’s absurd. We are starving. We are binge eating. We are empty. We strive to fill the unfillable hole. The ache of our humanity. The thing we drink to silence. We shop to stifle.
Meanwhile behind the whitened smile of our Instagram profile pic we feel anxious and scared. We feel disconnected and sad.
In a world that’s never had more people we feel alone.
Welcome to late-stage capitalism where the star of the show is alienation. And it’s centre stage.
It’s hard not to feel a little disenchanted.
As humans we so desperately need to have something we can believe in. An oasis of moral calm in a savage sea.
The other day it occurred to me that nature is the only place with integrity.
It doesn’t want me to buy anything. It’s not collecting my data.
Nature isn’t watching me through my window and slipping through my door. Nature isn’t coming to rape me. Nature doesn’t send me bills. It doesn’t tell me I’m fat. Or old. Or stupid.
Nature doesn’t judge me.
Nature exists in this fragile timeless space. Trying to do what it has always done. Bees pollinating flowers. Ants circling the sap on a tree. A seed pushing a tiny shoot through the undergrowth looking for sun. A tree reaching for light. A magpie calling. A nest. A web. A home. Cycles of life and interdependence. Deep ecology. Natural intelligence. It doesn’t look for likes on social media.
It’s a place AI can’t reach.
I stand in nature, enjoy the sand under my feet, the sky above me. I feel small. Inconsequential. I feel part of something eternal. I am a grain of sand. I am a leaf on the forest floor. I am a bird in the tree. I am part of this. I am life.
It’s profound. It’s a return to self. It’s medicine.
Wild spaces are precious. They’re a reminder it’s possible to live in balance. That dominance of an invasive species creates destruction. That we as humans are an invasive species nearly everywhere on the planet.
I think about David Attenborough who turns 100 on 8 May. He is, in my opinion, one of the truly remarkable humans, not because he has dominated nature through building or achievement, but because of his quiet fixated passion to understand and learn from nature.
Attenborough is the antidote to Epstein. To the manosphere. To my fury at the patriarchy.
He has lived his life with a simple enlightenment, that nature is our church, it is our library, it is our mirror, it is us.
Stand in nature. Be silent. Listen. Watch.
Then, stand for nature. It’s the only truth left.
Mandy Nolan’s column has appeared in The Echo for almost 25 years. She is a writer, comedian and artist, and was the Greens candidate at the past two elections.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
