Every time I come back to the town I spent the first half of my life in, I’m reminded of the well-known maxim, attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, about no man being able to step into the same river twice — “for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man” — which implied, centuries before it was proven by science, that the only constant in the universe is change.

The same street lights are still lighting up the same swaths of concrete in front of my mother’s house; and the same train’s whistle sounds from the same direction, at roughly the same time of day, as it has for at least the past 39 years. The town has changed some — a few new houses built, an old one torn down — but not nearly as much as I have.

This town (population: approx. 1,900) is one of the few places I know where park so abruptly becomes forest. On my morning walks, I’m almost always alone — save for the near-infinite number of living organisms that make up the bewilderingly complex yet perfectly synchronistic system we call nature.

The sun didn’t rise quite as early today as it did, nine hours ago, back in Stockholm. But wherever it can reach the understory, I detect the unmistakeable aroma of its rays on trees, of the previous night’s dampness being burned away. The slow evaporation of dew off needles, moss, and leaves; it’s what I imagine gratitude would smell like.

I did not come home to relearn that life can move slower, or to get a crash refresher on what really matters in the end. But how often do we get to choose the way we’re presented life’s most-essential curricula? Personally, I would not have chosen to watch a great man die, but that’s the task that was presented to me all the same.

“Perhaps the first rule of everything we endeavor to do is to pay attention. Perhaps the second is to be patient. And perhaps a third is to be attentive to what the body knows.”

Barry Lopez
Arctic dreams

More changes than you’d think, often in ways you won’t immediately understand, when you start giving your full attention to every experience. By choosing to slow down and look closely, much of what we’ve let become ordinary regains its appeal, even its wonder. By narrowing the beam of our awareness, what we once regarded as extravagant often begins to feel indulgent, even excessive.

When did all of our habits become life-hacks? When did all of our hobbies turn into side-hustles? It’s as though our capacity to appreciate almost any activity has become dependent on its potential scalability, money-making prospects, or online visibility. We seem to have lost our ability to find joy in the doing itself.

I know it sounds too simple to be helpful, but the best remedy for apathy and discontent is to actively participate in what seems ordinary or routine. For the opposite of boredom isn’t distraction, or even entertainment; it’s being satisfied with things just as they are.

Offering little more than a passing glance, with no real understanding of our own preferences and desires, we judge hastily, unnecessarily. But can anyone really say whether a sunset is objectively better than a fireworks display, better than going to the ballet, better than watching a baseball game? Is there even a way to effectively rank the value of these activities?

Sure, one activity very well might hold our attention better than another, but it would be a mistake to think we can externalize this responsibility.

The Universe isn’t going to suddenly start demanding our attention; it is never going to worry about entertaining us. Meaning, it’s up to each of us to become absorbed in the often trivial experience of being alive on this planet — of being a conscious organism flying though infinite space at 67,000 miles per hour on a 4.5-billion-year-old rock made up primarily of aluminum, calcium, sodium, potassium, iron, oxygen, and silicon.

I know… Zzzzz. Thank god for TikTok and monster trucks, right?

Although it will certainly not be easy, we all have the ability to take charge of our experience, to keep the noise down, to consciously shape our tastes, priorities, and perspectives.

“My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind — without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.”

William James
The Principles of Psychology

On a visit earlier this year to the Mata-Jardim José do Canto, on the Portuguese island of São Miguel, I found myself alone, standing on a fallen log looking up at a 150-foot-high waterfall known as the Salto do Rosal, the “Jump from the Rosary.” Closing my eyes, I let my arms hang down at my sides, engaging in a sort of impromptu standing meditation.

But after just a few minutes of not doing anything, I begin to feel restless, even self-conscious. So, I double down. “There’s nobody here!” I announce forcefully, my words muffled by the down-crashing water, then lost altogether in the up-swirling mist. “There’s nobody here.”

Only nature, which includes the accumulation of stardust that is Me.

On my hike to get there, I stopped to inspect the Sequóia Gigante, a lone Sequoia Sempervirens, aka California Redwood, that must be 200 feet tall and nearly six feet in diameter. On my way back, I pay a visit to the Azinheira, a gnarled Holm Oak perched on a low hill. Both trees are, I’d guess, a century older than the garden itself.

Established in the mid-19th century, this “woodland garden” was the vision of José do Canto — a wealthy Portuguese landowner, intellectual, renowned gardener, and amateur botanist — who spent much of his life introducing new crops and agricultural technologies to the Azores archipelago; and who, over the course of several decades, purchased roughly one hundred adjacent plots, amassing close to 1,500 acres, to accommodate his personal mata-jardim.

“Do you want some information about the chapel?” a friendly attendant asks me, in a thick Portuguese accent, after I’ve signed next to my name in the register, confirming my safe exit from the woods.

By chapel, I know she’s referring to the Capela de Nossa Senhora das Vitórias, or the “Chapel of Our Lady of Victories,” a French-inspired neo-Gothic mausoleum José do Canto had built for himself and his wife, Maria.

“No, thanks, ” I say, looking back in the direction from which I came. “But what can you tell me about the flowers?”

By flowers, she knows I mean the thousands of camellias, many of which were planted by José do Canto himself; white, pink, and red evenly rounded, cool-season blooms that appear every year from December to March.

I did not come here — to the Azores, to São Miguel, to the late José do Canto’s extravagant woodland garden — to be reminded that the limits of beauty only ever exist within us. But I’m always surprised by just how much water, trees, and flowers have to teach us, when we offer them our undivided attention.

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In loving memory of my grandpa Carl, who died on July 6, 2024, just a few months shy of his 90th birthday. He was a great man, and will be sincerely missed by all who knew him.