Exactly 50 years ago, on another day of September 16th, at the age of 6 years, 3 months, and 6 days, I experienced my first day of school.
Without glasses, white hair, a beard, or even the “seven years of upbringing,” still wearing a checkered shirt and a baggage of emotions for three to carry.
Today, the baggage is lighter, but these feelings are still there. The emotions from that moment, which had such a strong impact on me, are still latent in my body.
Whether school was the right environment for me or not, I have yet to fully discover and understand. What I do know is that, since I can still feel the emotions of that beginning, the impact of that day and that period was an exaggerated one.
In the end, what does the right environment mean?
For a basil plant like the one in the picture, it might “simply” be the difference between a room in a block of flats and a sunny balcony corner basking in the summer sun.
This once radiant intoxicating beauty green with shades of purple was about a month ago withered, dying, reduced to two dry brown sticks with only two small leaves stubbornly hanging on. On a morning blessed with Presence, I looked closely and asked myself: Can I “revive” the basil if I place it in the right light, if I find it in the right environment?
The first answer came a few days after I moved it outside to a space on the balcony, where the strong summer sun warmed it directly for half the day, from noon until evening. One of the upper nodes, seemingly dried up, had already turned a faint fresh green, and my eyes filled with tears of gratitude as I began to understand the right environment.
Since then, every day has been sprinkled with this realization—the miracle of life and the context in which Life sustains Life.
The basil in this story guided me to find the right environment, just as Life guides Beings to continuously rediscover the right context, the right environment.
Being alive as a human being, with a human body and its perceptions, decisions, and daily life.
Our ‘job’ is presence, an ever-expanding consciousness as our perceptions become balanced and comprehensive, and Life becomes understandable.
The basil is myself—it is up to me to learn how to listen to Existence so that I may continuously rediscover the right environment through the clarity of my perceptual ‘vision.’
That environment lies at the delicate and complex boundary between support and challenge, where Consciousness and Uplift reside.
For me, as the initiator of the Pădureni Project, https://roecovillage.com/en/home-en/, and the creator of a context designed to nurture the right environment for evolutionary flourishing, the revived basil symbolizes Uplift, green with shades of violet.