Jimmy Harry has written a world-renowned bestseller, Animism and Beauty, which, while about animals, also contains a broader theme: animism and beauty.
This spirit is not just a living being, but everything in the world; this spirit is not superficial, but a feeling and story given by man. It requires us to observe with our eyes, to experience with our hearts, to give life to time, and to give eternity to legends.
// 01
Human beings often feel that they are superior and unique beings, forgetting that other beings are equally worthy of love and respect.
Ivory smuggling, many Chinese people feel that it is far away.
But you know what?
According to the documentary "Ivory Game", 70% of Africa's ivory eventually flows to the Chinese market. Every year, hundreds of tons of ivory raw material are smuggled into China, spawning a multibillion-dollar black trade.
Southern Weekend once reported:
"China has become the world's largest illegal ivory consumer market, but two-thirds of Chinese don't know that ivory is obtained by killing elephants."
A pair of ivory is a life.
Slaughtering elephants is the only way to get their tusks.
Ivory cannot be obtained alone because adult tusks can be more than 3 meters long and a third grow inside the skull.
The only way to take teeth is to kill the elephant.
A Chinese journalist, after witnessing the process of killing elephants and taking teeth, wrote a shocking sentence:
"An adult male elephant curled up and lay on its side, half its face and trunk cut off by an axe and fell to the side, its tusks gone. The elephant, which had lost its face and nose, was still struggling, constantly swinging its limbs. ”
In 1979, there were 1.3 million African elephants, and today there are only about 400,000. Following this trend, African elephants will become extinct within 15 years.
15 years is not long, a child can grow up, but he may only be able to see specimens of African elephants in museums.
We all heard the legend of the elephant grave when we were children. The elderly elephant will find a secret cemetery on his own, waiting alone for death.
But these decapitated elephants are destined to abandon the wilderness. If they had a soul, they would never return to their homeland.
Animals don't speak, but they have feelings.
Elbert Schweitz said:
"Only when human beings can care for all living beings with compassion can they truly experience peace."
If you love, love purely; if you don't love, don't hurt.
// 02
Do you put your mind on your mind and say it to a passing ant?
As a child, you will.
Then you can easily enter the world of cordyceps and wander in a wonderful place that is free and free.
When you grow up and live in a concrete urban forest, how long have you not seen spiders, ladybugs, bees or butterflies walking through the flowers and trees? Even if you go back into the countryside, perhaps you still don't have time to linger on a small insect.
As you grow up, these insects also seem to disappear from your life.
It is as if the red dragonflies after the rain are lightly lit up after the rain, the wings of butterflies are dancing among the flowers, the seven-star ladybirds are sleeping soundly on the leaves, and the fireflies carrying lanterns flash in the grass on summer nights...
When you feel anxious and bored, you may as well calm down, like when you were a child, to see, to hear, to imagine, to breathe, just like Gu Cheng wrote in the poem -
"I Will Breathe Like Grass"
I would breathe like grass
On a very high riverbank
The water beneath your feet is unfathomable
It was as black as the back of a catfish
The river in the distance gradually became transparent
Drift all the way to the sand on the other side
The ups and downs there are tempting
Sleepy sunshine is resting
Further away is a forest of green shimmering woods
Recorded the wind's every move
There are always some cute little flowers in the wind
Never fastened a purple turban
Ants carry sand
Never be troubled by love
The free wild bees were singing
Dedicate a song to all the flowers
I would breathe, like grass
Tell the light dream to spring
I hope to sing many songs
Let the only smile never go away
Sanmao said that if there is an afterlife, make a tree, half peaceful in the dust, half flying in the wind.
Spring water is born, spring forest is beginning to flourish, you are in the vast world and all things, there is a gentle wind blowing in your ears, in front of you are grass vines, purple flowers, distant mountains are green, clear rivers meandering. You are intoxicated, imagining that you are also one of the plants, calming down in the sun, stretching out, you feel soft as a leaf, pure as a flower. What a wonderful time!
Although life is short and joyful, it is the luck of being born to be a human being to be able to vividly perceive the world of a grass, a grain of sand, and a wild bee in a certain moment.
In today's impetuous society, perhaps we should sink our hearts and simply live like plants.
// 03
A friend who was isolated at home in Shanghai suddenly saw outside his window one day, a tree of camellia flowers blooming leisurely next to no one.
The scenery that he had never cared about before, at that moment, seemed to have reached the end of the road, and the willows and dark flowers he saw when the mountains and rivers were poor and the waters were restored, for the first time in his life, he was surprised by the bloom of a tree of flowers to tears.
The spring wind will blow away the spring flowers, and it will also blow open a dead heart, which is probably the meaning of spring. As it is said in "Animism and Beauty",
"The spring sun is one of nature's most precious treasures, it will not burn you, but it will make you feel warm even the soles of your feet."
On the contrary, if you live in the spring and have a dead heart, this is probably the most regrettable thing in the world.
When the flowers are not blooming, they feel that the spring is delayed; when the flowers are thankful, they hate that the spring is too short. Such as Zhou Yunpeng's poem:
"Spring rebukes those who have no soul, blames me for not blossoming, not flourishing, about to decay, without a soul."
When we truly begin to love nature and become a part of it, in the quiet scenery, on the distant horizon, we will see something as beautiful as our own nature.
Spring has passed, it doesn't matter. Don't let the spring in your heart pass.
// 04
Life is like a piece of cotton and linen, the surface is full of worldliness, rushing, depression, exhaustion, but inside it is a brocade, embroidered with joy, peace, richness, and clarity.
Most people in the world are forced to make a living, deeply immersed in the triviality and dullness of life, living a vulgar life, but forgetting to observe the small flashes around them, and their hearts are helpless. Only by tearing open the outer layer of life and admiring the bloom of a flower, the flow of a white cloud, the pouring of a beam of sunshine, and the tranquility of a lake of autumn water, life will be full of texture and deep meaning.
When you open all your senses and merge into all things, you will find that everything contains a sense of beauty with its own logic.
May your life be more than the present, but also poetry and distant fields.