Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
I'm perched on a grey granite boulder.
I'm back home now,
Back on the southern edge of Dartmoor and I've just walked up enjoying a bit of autumnal sunshine and there's a bit of a blowy southerly wind and I'm sitting with my back to the wind to protect the microphone and I'm looking up this hillside.
We call it Eastern Beacon or Ugber Beacon and it's got a golden coppery brown haze of bracken that is coating the hillside and you can just see the path,
The green path,
Winding its way up to the top with some sheep grazing part way up.
I just love this time of year for the colours,
The colours seem to be so rich and vibrant and on Dartmoor there isn't a lot of colour,
Usually there's just different shades of green but at this time of year you get this wonderful autumnal burnished brown and I love it.
And today's reflection comes from a conversation I had with a friend.
We were talking about end of life with our elderly parents and grief with the death of my dad and death of her dad and she's also caring for her mum and I'm caring for my mum.
So we were exploring this in our conversation.
And we were talking about grief.
And one of the things my friend said,
Which touched me deeply and I want to share with you today,
Is she was talking about connecting with her dad.
Pretty much on his deathbed.
He knew he was going to die and he had the family around him.
And she described this relationship with her dad as being not a close relationship.
It'd been quite troubled.
She'd been seen as a little bit of the child that was doing things her own way,
Differently,
Not kind of fitting in with the rest of the family.
So she'd had this fairly up and down relationship with her parents and with her dad.
And her dad as he was living for his final few days and she was beside him as were other members of the family sitting beside him He sort of said to her,
You are a really good person.
There was something he recognised as he neared the end of life.
And she reflected on that,
But the bit that really touched her was when he said to her,
And they were talking about the purpose of life.
And he said that it feels to me as though until you've actually achieved your purpose,
You continue living.
And he said it felt to him as though his purpose,
And he'd only just seen this,
He'd seen that the meaning of life for him,
And this is the bit I'm so touched by,
The meaning of life for him is that it was all about people and it was all about love.
Like the meaning of life,
It's all about people and it's all about love.
What a reflection to nurture and nourish when we are still alive and we are still living and we are not on our deathbeds.
But that is what it is all about.
And my friend was deeply moved by this because these were the kinds of conversations she never had with her dad.
And yet he,
At the end of his life,
Had said something so profound that it deeply moved her and she continues to remember it and reflect on it to this day.
It's all about people and it's all about love.
Now that landed for me too,
There was real resonance in these words that he spoke.
And I'm just curious about,
For you,
Do you feel that resonance too?
It's all about people and it's all about love.
And then it occurred to me,
Well,
If it is all about people and it is all about love,
And if that is absolutely what feels as though it is the foundation of my life.
Then how am I turning up in life and how am I honouring that and how is that being reflected through me and my actions?
If it is all about love and it's all about people,
How does that actually show up?
And my sense is that often when we look at purpose in life,
We're looking at something tangible in the world that we're going to achieve,
Or do,
Or say,
Or enact,
Or a circumstance that we're going to engage with,
Or people,
Or projects.
But actually,
What if the purpose of life is just to recognize something fundamental about the nature of what it is to be human?
That it's all about love and it's all about people.
What does that feel like for you?
Does that resonate?
Or is there something that you have that feels even more personal to you that makes so much more sense?
What is the purpose of life for you?
I'd love to know your reflections.
And of course,
Don't forget to join me again tomorrow for another five minutes in nature.
