The world will teach you

Kneel beside a nettle patch. Not to harvest, though you might, later. Not to study or identify. To spend time. To be a good neighbour.

This is how presence begins — not with purpose, but with proximity.

The nettle doesn't need your analysis or your Latin names.

It requires your attention, the kind that arrives empty-handed and stays put.

Come most mornings for months.

Long enough to notice how the patch responds to rainfall and changing light. Long enough to see which insects visit when.

To witness the whole community of beings that call this small patch of ground home.

What emerges from this practice isn't knowledge about nettles — it's conversation with them.

You begin to recognise how their leaves catch morning dew, how they lean toward gaps in the canopy, and the soft percussion of rain on their serrated edges.

You notice the red admiral butterflies that depend on this patch for their children and the aphids that cluster on tender stems. The ground beetles hunt in the soil below.

This is ecological literacy written in flesh and chlorophyll rather than textbooks.

The nettle becomes a portal into the intricate relationships that sustain all life — including yours.

Through months of quiet attendance, you discover that the plant is never separate from its community, never isolated from the weather patterns and seasonal rhythms that shape its growth.

The world teaches everything you need to know, but only to those willing to sit still long enough to listen.

This isn't passive observation — it's active participation in the conversation that surrounds us always.

The nettle patch becomes a teacher not because it holds secrets but because it reveals the obvious truth we've forgotten: we are part of this community, too.

To know a place this intimately changes how you move through all areas.

You begin to see every verge, every crack in the pavement, every overlooked corner as home to someone.

The practice spreads.