The World Is Trying to Change You. Let It.

"Biophilia literally means an innate human love of nature, but the feeling behind it is more dynamic than a fondness for trees. It carries the idea that the world is not passive. It acts on us. It shapes us without our planning or permission. It works on the mind the way the wind works on leaves, rearranging thoughts that have gotten stiff or frozen."

"This idea became beautifully clear when we interviewed Kimberly Haley-Coleman, founder of Globe Aware, an organization that creates short-term service experiences in communities around the world. People often imagine that volunteering means going somewhere to fix something. Kimberly reframed it with a gentleness that surprised me. She told us that volunteers may arrive ready to work, but they leave transformed by the environment itself."

Biophilia denotes an innate human love of nature and implies that environments actively influence human thought and feeling. Natural settings can rearrange rigid or stuck thinking and produce change without deliberate self-tinkering. Short-term service experiences often place volunteers within local rhythms, and immersion in landscape, sounds, and community can transform participants more than the work they perform. Hands-on activities like building with mud, ash, or concrete alongside local families situate people in settings that reconnect them to nature and community. Showing up in these environments enables natural healing and perspective shifts.

Read at Psychology Today