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The morning sunlight is peeping through the veil curtains in my bedroom and gently touches my eyelids. Still in the light dream, I refuse to accept the warm invitation and hide myself somewhere between dream and reality. However, the sun is relentless – I keep feeling the move of morning jazz on my closed eyes – conspiring with the breeze and the branches on a tree out of the window to wake me up. I finally surrender myself to the ‘power of nature’. It reminds me of the first part of T.S. Eliot’s poem, ‘The Waste Land’: April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain ……… How paradoxical it is, but it’s not totally unfamiliar with us at all especially in the world we are living in now. The warm sunbeam can be like a loud alarm clock which wakes you up every morning. It’s actually cruel to people who want to forget reality and not to be woken up. The experience of ‘Cruelty’ is subjective of course and it can be transformed into ‘Creativity’. We can choose to either proactively innovate ourselves or to stay with the status quo. The latter might give you a bit of comfort or even distort your reality for your convenience for a while, but you wouldn’t be able to go further anywhere, and you would feel that you are stuck, you are a victim, and you even blame it on the outer world rather than you look into your inner world. Perhaps, I may say yes to the Covid-19 world to a certain extent, but I would like to ask you what YOU could do if you ever wanted to change the route of your thought or your situation. Have you ever tried to do any experiments in your life? I think it’s a way of becoming more creative. It can be anything if it’s against a pattern you usually follow. It doesn’t need to be too big or too different – it can be just simple but involve some level of discomfort – it’s not your usual pattern, so you will likely feel nervous and some risk-managing mindset takes you over. Whenever I feel that, I pause and try to observe myself from the third-person point of view – Hal Stone and Sidra Stone called this ‘Aware Ego’ in their psychology theory – it helps a lot when you detach yourself from the experiment itself that you can have the experience more objectively with less complication. I trust myself and I simply ask myself, ‘So what?’, like Pink’s song! Thanks to the recent good weather, there are more options to choose such as outdoor activities, once a day with social distancing in the UK. Of course, I obey the social distancing rules – but you can still take lots of opportunities within the restrictions and in safety – yes, I’m a glass-half-full person! I think that it’s even luxurious to be able to be exercise outdoors especially when the weather is beautiful like now. It’s a great time to go for a walk in the countryside! Strangely, I haven’t discovered many walking paths around my town since I moved here 5 years ago. Is it perhaps because of frequencies of my work and holiday trips or because I felt more comfortable with walking on my regular routes? Probably both! So, one of experiments I did the other day was to walk in the opposite direction from the way I usually take – to the end of the long residential street down my house – which I have never taken before, just to see what is out there in my neighbourhood. Surprisingly, I could see that there is an extended walking path literally at the end of the tunnel – which doesn’t show on the map at all – after about 15-minute walk following a seemingly dead-end street. It was just amazing to realise that I could find such a place off the beaten track on my doorstep. Every step I took in the little woods was slower than usual and careful, actually rather mindful. It was like I didn’t want to miss anything from this ‘first’ experience. There are many different types of birds chirping in the tree tunnel and I’m wondering where they all are, perhaps are they camouflaged with leaves or branches of trees? Oh, did I just hear the sound of a peacock now? His name is Kevin and all neighbours know him. You may find him sunbathing on roof tops on a sunny day. I feel quiet and still surrounded by the various sounds whilst walking through this path. The ground I am walking on is dry and hard because of a lack of rain recently. I suddenly feel tree roots under my feet and step back to see if they are really tree roots or not. They must have been walked over so many times and for such a long period of time, so they can be mistaken with stones. I am again astonished by the old trees which are holding themselves on to the ground to stand still – literally ‘grounded’ – I’m praying to myself that I hope that I am grounded like these trees whenever the weather changes or even through storms. My walking meditation led to a wide-open and green field with narrow river streams where horses, cows or bulls, sheep, geese and ducks live and birds of prey such as kites or hawks hover in the sky. I felt like I just opened a treasure box when I looked at the scene. Now, I know that there are hidden public footpaths here and there in the British countryside. According to Bill Bryson, he says in his book ‘The Road to Little Dribbling’ that England and Wales have 130,000 miles of public footpaths, about 2.2 miles of path for every square mile of area. How extraordinary is it? I just feel gratitude and love to live so close to wild nature. Taking a new route sometimes gives you a pleasant surprise like this – though it’s not easy to overcome your fear of the unknown or uncertain – but, don’t forget that you can choose whether to live in cruelty or in creativity. It’s up to you!