The Circles And Rhythms Of Life

Aloha, and welcome to The National Arboretum at Westonbirt. I thought I’d come here today, and this is a walking video, so I can share this amazing place with you.

It’s an incredible landscape, it’s national, I suppose a national tree collection, a national museum of trees almost. And it was created by this guy called Robert Holford who was a Victorian, who just came up with this incredible, incredible vision. And he collected trees from all the way around the planet, and it’s just absolutely stunning.

And I decided to come here today because I wanted to celebrate the end of Autumn because we’re just coming into that place where autumn becomes winter. Clocks go back at the weekend, and the trees really are beginning to change as you can see.

And the reason I wanted to celebrate the end of autumn, is to celebrate the sense of seasons and cycles. In the Hawai’ian system, one of the most important concepts in the Hawai’ian system is the concepts of cycles and rhythms.

The idea that life is always about cycles and rhythms.

Now when you’re in a stunning, amazing, natural place like this, it’s really easy to tune into the cycles. And even living where I do, it’s easy to tune into the cycle. But sometimes we either live in a place that’s very metropolitan, so we’re not as close to the seasons. And other times, we just don’t have the time.

Now, from a Hawai’ian perspective, it’s not just nature that gives us cycles and rhythms. It’s also everything in life has a cycle, has a rhythm where the energy will flex, move almost in the energy, the idea is the energy always moves in a wave. And it’s always moving from one point to the other, and back again.

And you want the movement because the movement creates possibility.

The big piece for me about cycles and rhythms is in my own life, noticing the cycles and rhythms particularly when I’ve experienced the down times. Because for every down time, every time you go down in the cycle, there’s always an up going up the other side of the cycle.

And it’s so easy to forget that particularly when you’re really having a bad time, when you’re really in a fit of the dismals and things aren’t working too well. So when you are in a fit of the dismals, when things aren’t working too well, having in mind that sense of there’s a cycle and there’s a rhythm.

The Hawai’ians would talk about surfing the wave because of course, you’ve got that natural rhythm with the tides, and the waves. But it’s the same with the waves in our own life. Surfing the waves in our life, riding the wave rather than trying to fight them.

And the key to that is actually identifying the wave in the first place.

Notice it when it starts and as it starts to turn, and as you start to come back, that can be difficult when you’re actually in it. But it really really helps with dealing with stuff. So from Westonbirt, from this absolutely beautiful, beautiful place in it’s floral-some glory, here’s to the cycles and rhythms, and the coming of winter.

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