A Response to Science

Last week, my friend was on her lunch break in a high-rise office building in downtown Philadelphia. From her cubicle, she emailed me this article by Wray Herbert from Newsweek.com. Today, while wrapped in a blanket at my computer, I read two blogs from my classmates: The Turning of Self from Mark Anthony, and A Cold S(easonally) A(ffected) D(isordered) Place from Kristin. All three of these online nuggets got me thinking about science.

John "beauty is truth, truth beauty" Keats probably rolls in his grave each time something is proven true by science. But in the case of the Newsweek article above, it seems that science is proving the truth of beauty, at least as far as natural beauty is concerned. Imagine! A study has proven that overworked and stressed-out jobbers out there in Officeland are calmed and reenergized by a walk in the park.

In Kristin's blog, she writes about the effect a dark, cold winter can have on our emotions. She asks, "Do people who live in a wooded area have lower blood pressure?" And Mark Anthony, while walking off a bit of melancholy, reflects, "Interesting how much control our moods can have over what we see and take notice of." Do our moods control what we see, or does what we see control our moods?

It seems, according to the scientists featured in the Newsweek article, that it might be a little bit of both. Stressed-out workers seemed to calm down with the very image of a natural setting before them. But after a three-mile walk, with time enough to reflect on their surroundings, get their brains to calm down after some busy deskwork, their entire bodies began to calm down. And it wasn't just the exercise, as the control group proves. "Interacting with nature shifts the mind to a more relaxed and passive mode, allowing the more analytical powers to restore themselves," says Herbert.

That's why I'm so thankful for the weekly assignment this semester to spend time outside, no matter the weather. I find that I stroll my backyard and visit local parks more often than I would have otherwise, even when I'm not working on an assignment. When we take our natural, animal selves outside, it's a brief reminder of what we are at the very bottom of things. We are not spreadsheets and editor's marks and state educational standards; we are flesh and bone, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, hearing, seeing, smelling, and feeling. And maybe that added perspective is what really brings us back down to earth.