Dave Cortright 🔸 comments on On Suicide

[Dave Cortright 🔸]

I appreciate you being so honest here, N.I. The small beauties of nature can indeed help ground us in the world. I’m reminded of:

For many years, at great cost, I traveled through many countries, saw the high mountains, the boundless oceans. The only things I did not see were the sparkling dewdrops in the grass just outside my door.
—Rabindranath Tagore

And:

But I have forgotten one thing—the singing!
There was such a lot of singing in the villages then,
and this was my pleasure, too.
Boys sang in the fields,
and at night we all met at the pub and sang.
The chapels were full of singing.
When the war came,
it was singing, singing all the time.
So I lie; I have had pleasure.
I have had singing.”
—Ronald Blythe in Akenfield

Noticing and savoring the small pleasures of life is a skill. I invite you to keep practicing it. ❤️

One more thing. Robin Dunbar—biological anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist —noted in his book Friends:

When our ancestors needed to increase the size of our social groups during the course of later human evolution, we had to find some way of extending our grooming circle proportionately. Increasing the time devoted to grooming was [not feasible]. The only realistic alternative was to use what time we had available more efficiently… We discovered several ways of triggering the endorphin system using behaviors that allowed us to engage in virtual grooming at a distance such that we could—in effect—groom several people simultaneously. These include laughter, singing and dancing, feasting, storytelling, and the rituals of religion, probably in that order.”

I invite you to engage in one or more of these activities with others. I personally go to stand-up comedy shows, listen to The Moth radio hour and audiobooks, and sing in a community choir. It all helps keep my demons at bay.