Obey the Seasons; Touch the Elements
Touch Grass
Man is cold. Man is hot. Man shivers, Man sweats.
I’m not some hippie nut telling you to sleep under the stars and jump in an ice fishing hole in order to activate brown fat. But, my good man, stop hiding from nature.
The ancient Greeks believed that every thing is one of the elements; Thales of Miletus Water as the arche; Anaximenes of Miletus Air as the arche; Heraclitus Fire as the arche. Eventually, through the metaphor of the burning log or stick, the four classical elements were considered part of everything. In their stupor of divine madness, these proto-philosophers were right. We are, cosmically speaking, the movement of these four elements within the microcosm that is our body.
Chinese thought is more specific about it, with the five phases, the five pulses, the five main rotations of energy in the body in relationship with the 5-organs system. A perpetual cycle of fire → water → wood → metal → earth, Wuxing, denoting the transformation of your vital energy according to the ‘movement of heavens’.
Even though these “elements” are philosophical, they’re rooted in nature because all is nature as long as we’re tethered to this world. Yet, we continue to starve our bodies by insulating them, hiding from the seasons.
Homeostasis and an ever-shifting balance
Think of the last time it rained. Try to remember what happened in your body but also how you felt. The first sign of an incoming rain is the smell. The intense dampness that, through the interaction of the olfactory nerve with the hippocampus, triggers memories of your childhood. Then the weakest link in your body will ache or simply inform you that it’s there. Maybe you notice that your breathing becomes slightly labored as the atmospheric pressure drops. Lastly, your psychology is affected. Good or bad, it doesn’t matter in this case but the sunlight hiding and the first roars of thunder are enough to cause some turmoil.
All of the above happen in the span of an hour, before a droplet even hits the ground. And what do you do?
You go into hiding, a proper city dweller. Your body and mind went through all of this trouble to prepare you for rain and you ignored it.
What do I do instead? I open the windows wide, I go out, I raise my hands to the sky and I embrace the elements of water and air.
Humans are designed to stay the same. You don’t realize this but you’re constantly shifting, biologically speaking, to maintain the correct balance between you and the outer environment. To strengthen the boundaries between you and the world. In recent years, we’ve achieved the total “extroversion” of this homeostatic mechanism with the use of technology. We attempt to balance the elements and homogenize the seasons externally, causing our inner elements to atrophy since they don’t have anything to balance with.
Summers aren’t quite like summers and winters are more Californian, if you will. Call me crazy, but I believe this totalization affects our minds.
Nietzsche said “Never trust a thought that occurs to you indoors.” because your thoughts are tempered by the elements when you’re exposed to them physically. Wood, for example, will affect your liver organ-meridian, and liver is associated with anger — see bound Prometheus getting his liver eaten by an eagle to quench Zeus’ anger for stealing the fire from the gods. Unbalanced “wood” will result in a specific kind of mental output, maybe too angsty because you haven’t walked in a forest and touched the trees (or grass?).
Oh it’s just a theory so don’t take it too seriously. But let me ask you this:
Have you noticed that every season has a different theme? Some days only allow for a particular strain of thought to unfold? A cold winter’s morning and a dry summer’s evening develop a different appetite in each man. Your inner world is self-organized in ways that track with the outer environment.
Experience the Seasons, okay?
Every year I tweet some version of this:
A reminder to let each season imprint on you. Let the sun heat your blood, let the ocean burn your skin, the hearth during a snowstorm nurture your soul, and the winds of spring uplift your spirit.
Like a druid, pay respect to nature by allowing her to work through you
Like an alchemist, allow the Great Work to unfold in you
Like a Taoist, let the cycles of Wuxing to rotate internally
Just be natural, in the real sense of the world. It’s only through the realization of our connection to nature that we’ll be able to will ourselves out of its limitations.
I tried to keep it under 1,000 words. Apparently, this is what Substack believes you're capable of reading in one go...
But you let me know. Do you like longer or shorter essays?
I'm incredibly excited to hear about the proper translation of "element" in Wuxing...
Longer ❤️