Editor’s note: Mari Rodríguez Ichaso has been a contributor to Vanidades magazine for several decades. She is a fashion specialist…
Editor’s note: Mari Rodríguez Ichaso has been a contributor to Vanidades magazine for several decades. She is a specialist in fashion, travel, gastronomy, art, architecture and entertainment, a film producer and a style columnist for CNN en Español. The opinions expressed in this column are solely his own. Read more opinion pieces at cnne.com/opinion
(CNN Spanish) – Sometimes we forget that our desire to follow fashion – and to have a good look and look as beautiful as possible – can be secondary if we do not take care of other aspects of our day to day. And, sometimes, it is very important to stop, look around us, and discover that we are very lucky people and we are surrounded by intangible wonderful moments.
And nature —which is an undeniable part of our lives— offers countless wonderful moments! We just need to look closely, and feel the beauty of the sea, of those foamy waves that come and go. Of those white clouds that change shapes in those blue skies. In the serenity of a lake. The mysterious mountains with icy caps. The birds and the perfect colors of their feathers. The world of fish. From the bottom of the sea. I couldn’t live without them anymore!
And our lifestyle, which has received so many blows in the last two and a half years, can be embellished with a moment of contemplation of that nature that, sometimes, we ignore because we have become accustomed to its being there.
And appreciating so many beauties is a symbolic renewal that deeply nourishes the spirit, and it is a beautiful lesson in spirituality.
Therefore, I encourage you to celebrate what nature puts in front of us. That serenity is exquisite. When I was little, I always felt very close to God when I sat in front of the sea. I don’t know if it’s because I was born and raised in Cuba, a beautiful island in the Caribbean. But the sea gave me a divine sensation, that everything could be achieved in life, when we faced that powerful immensity. A sea that always transmitted its strength and purity to me. And now—many years later and with a new maturity—I feel even more deeply the force of nature.
That is why it is good to ask ourselves, do you feel the same? Does she inspire you beautiful things?
This reflection is excellent for feeling good, which is reflected on our face and makes us more beautiful than 100 creams! There have been famous women, very spiritual and who adored nature, like Audrey Hepburn –a perfect example of this, whom I interviewed when she was older and who was “magical”–, who reflected that internal glow and that serenity.
Going for a walk in a nearby park, or on the beach, and paying attention to those messages from nature is a charm. It never fails! And when winter passes, for example, I like to look at the dry trees in New York’s Central Park, which have passed the winter frosts, and are destroyed. But they encourage me, because very soon, and without fail!, we will see their branches reborn, young and healthy, and the buds of their old bark will fill with leaves again… A mysterious rebirth that fills me with hope and optimism -and that when we have problems it can help us see that everything changes – because the water always returns to its course!
And the same thing happens to me when I see the flowers reborn and the roads light up with the new yellow of the forsythias, which come out again as if they had been woken up by a clock!
That joy of knowing that there are things that will never stop happening, and that after
from the storm comes calm, it is advice on how to live that sometimes we do not appreciate. And it’s the best lifestyle advice.
I confess that I did not always pay attention to these things. Everything was part of my habitat, of my daily life, full of other things that were more important. But everything changed a few years ago when I watched the documentary “Winged Migration” and learned how birds make the same flight every year, crossing continents, jungles and seas, to return to their exact place of origin. Wonderful!
It was a lesson in spirituality in a beautiful film that I recommend to everyone. And so it was that nature became a wonderful silent teacher. My father – who was a poet and loved life and nature – I remember that he told me “you just have to learn to listen to it”.
To finish, I confess that this new appreciation of nature has made me love watching documentaries on TV about the animals of the jungle or the bottom of the sea. Something that had never interested me and actually bored me! To see how things can change…
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