The Bloomed Years: A Nature of Me

I was once a boy who didn’t know he loved nature—until it whispered to him in silence.

I grew up in a small village where the morning came not with alarms, but with the chatter of sparrows and the hush of golden winds. Eighteen years passed in that Eden, and yet I did not count them. They moved through me like rivers: without resistance, without questions. I didn't know I was blooming. I only knew I was alive.

Now, as I sit in this quiet room, this "room of sixty," as I call it—where I still have fifty-eight more years, perhaps, to become the man I should be—I look back at the eighteen I lived and the man I lost along the way.

Back then, I was not just myself. I was a dandelion’s breath on a child’s lips. I was the morning dew clinging to the veins of a leaf. I was the wind slipping through wheatfields, the rhythm in the wings of a hawk. I felt it all—not as a poet or philosopher—but as one who simply was. And isn’t that what childhood is? An unknowing union with the world?

I remember lying beneath an old banyan tree, its roots half above the earth like wrinkled hands telling stories. I listened to the way its leaves spoke to the wind, how each flutter was not just noise but language. I didn’t need to speak. I just breathed. That was enough.

I didn’t realize then that I was living the most sacred years of my life. I didn’t know how time steals quietly, smiling all the while.

Now, in the buzz of adult life, among pixels and paychecks, I mourn the loss of those eighteen years—not because they are gone, but because I never knew to love them when they were mine.

And yet, this is not a story of despair. It is a story of return.

Because I have not forgotten. No, the whisper of the trees, the songs of rivers, the hymns of hills—they still live in me, humming like echoes in a canyon.

I still remember what it felt like to be the rain. Not just feel it, but be it. To fall freely, to kiss the earth, to vanish into something greater. I was the silence before thunder. I was the goosebump that rose on skin touched by the first drop of monsoon.

But I grew older. Life became louder. And with each year, I lost a piece of that quiet self.

I began to fear the silence I once loved. I replaced the birdsong with playlists. I forgot how to sit under a tree without photographing it. I forgot how to walk slowly.

I became a man in a hurry. And in my speed, I stepped over beauty. I crushed the spider on the leaf before seeing its art. I scolded the wind for being cold. I called the rain an inconvenience.

I stopped being part of nature. I became its observer. Or worse—its controller.

I wore the title of “man” like it meant something higher than tree or tiger or tide. I forgot that the tree gives shade without being asked. The tiger takes only what it needs. The tide returns everything it borrows.

But man… man takes and forgets to return. Man wounds and forgets to heal. Man names and forgets to understand.

In losing touch with nature, I lost touch with myself.

There were times I felt strong—when I spoke loudly, climbed higher, earned more. But that strength was hollow. It echoed. It trembled in silence.

True strength, I realize now, lies in stillness. In giving. In being just and kind.

Nature taught me that.

The sun never demands thanks. It rises for all—rich or poor, cruel or kind. The moon doesn’t complain when ignored. The river forgives the stone that blocks it. The tree still gives fruit to the hand that cut it yesterday.

How noble is Nature, and how petty is man.

And yet—yet I believe we are not lost. Not fully. Because I remembered. And if I can remember, so can others.

This story I write now is not for sympathy or nostalgia. It is a hymn. A call. A return.

To remind you—and myself—that we are more than machines with schedules. We are more than noise. We are made of mud and light, water and dust, hope and breath.

We are meant to be like the lily that grows quietly in a pond, unseen but perfect. Like the snow that falls with purpose but no pride. Like the spider who spins not for praise but for the joy of weaving.

We are meant to be good men.

Not men of conquest, but men of compassion. Men who give more than they take. Who speak less, listen more. Who pause. Who kneel before a tree. Who walk barefoot in the grass—not to reach somewhere, but to remember where we began.

In these eighteen years, I was unknowingly perfect. And in the next fifty-eight, I hope to become that child again—but this time, with awareness. With gratitude.

I hope to become once more the pebble in the stream, content in its stillness. To be the curve in the river, bending without breaking. To be the silence in the snowfall.

I want to be the man who plants a tree knowing he will not sit in its shade.

And so I begin again.

I now rise with the sun. I listen to the birds. I thank the sky even when it weeps. I speak gently, for words too are winds. I forgive quickly, because mountains never hold grudges.

I smile at strangers, for even flowers bloom for those who do not notice them.

The past may be gone, but I still have this room of fifty-eight.

And in this room, I will build a garden. A forest. A world.

For I am the dandelion, the hawk, the tree, the rain. I am the storm and the silence. I am the bloom and the decay. I am nature. And so are you.

Let us become good men again.

Let us return to the earth.

Let us bloom.