I am always looking up motivational quotes and it wasn’t
until learning about ‘natural piety’ that I started to notice and understand
why the majority of images that are used behind the quotes are of serene
pictures of nature.
Why does an image of nature make me feel more emotional
about a quote when I could see the same quote on a solid color background and
not feel the same?
Because nature brings out feelings in us that make us feel
at peace with ourselves. In a world where we live in our heads, seeing the
beauty and purity of nature reminds us that we are not actually robots. Beautiful
pictures of nature have a way of helping us see our struggles in a different
light. When I see a beautiful picture of the ocean or the forest I am
immediately drawn to the message written and for some reason I WANT to be more,
love more and live more.
I love the movie Avatar. For me, I love the story. It can
never be remade too many times. I like cliché. I love that it tells me a story
of the innocence and beauty of nature and how industrialization and greed can
ruin it - because it reminds me in the hustle and bustle of my crazy life that
I need to be kind to nature if I want to continue living.
When I was a child, I was innocent, I loved nature, I loved
learning, I loved imagining, I loved dreaming and I loved playing. But once I
began school, my childlike imagination and curiosity was muted and I was forced
to learn and focus on things that didn’t really interest me, but had to be
learned so I could become a functioning, contributing member of society.
Somewhere in the years of living in a classroom, I lost my
love for the outdoors. I lost my imagination. I lost my wonder. I lost my
ability to dream. And until I realized as an adult that I needed to FIND that
part of me again, I would always be getting lost in books and movies that told me
stories about the way I wanted to live my life.
Then there are artists like Thomas Kincade whose paintings
are beautiful images of outdoor nature scenes [that we know are too real to be
real] that thousands of people purchase so they can visit and revisit that
childlike romantic innocence that allows us to see nature as something amazing
and beautiful.
A Winter’s Eve - Thomas Kincade
Without nature, there is no life. I am drawn to the romance
that IS nature. I am drawn to the sites, the sounds, the views and the feelings
that pictures of nature give me. Romance is just that. It is the sites, the
sounds, the views and the feelings we get when we see images like this.
Movies like Avatar, artists like Kincade, writers like
Rousseau, motivational quotes on photos of nature – they all remind me that I need to be at peace with myself and that
even though life has changed and I have grown – that I can still even for a
moment, see the beauty, romance and innocense of nature and feel at peace.
Alexandra, sounds like you have a very special relationship with nature! I'm jealous. As somebody who come from a metropolitan city with extreme lack of trees and greens (and rarely travel), seeing a picture like that (first and second pic) is almost unreal to me. Although they are edited and perfected to enhance the beauty (perhaps the sky is made to look bluer, and the green trees are edited to look softer--more 'feminine), but they still come across as unimaginable beauty to me. They bring the message of purity, clarity, serenity and like you said, innocense and peace. Just looking at those pictures can silence the noise in your head for awhile, like your imagination ventures to those places and simply 'hear' the nature speaks. Powerful images :) Pictures truly speak a thousand words :)
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