A Book of Simple Living: Brief Notes from the Hills

by Ruskin Bond

Happiness is a mysterious thing, to be found somewhere between too little and too much.

Whenever I look up, the trees remind me that they are there. They are my best critics. As long as I am aware of their presence, I may avoid the thoughtless and the trivial.

I’m not sure that I really want to know. In an age when a scientific and rational explanation has been given for almost everything we see, it is good to have a mystery, a mystery sweet and satisfying and entirely my own.

It’s the simple things in life that keep us from going crazy. They contribute more to our general happiness and health than acts of passion and high excitement.

Live close to nature and your spirit will not be easily broken, for you learn something of patience and resilience. You will not grow restless, and you will never feel lonely.

‘Is Nature your religion?’ someone asked me recently. It would be presumptuous to say so. Nature doesn’t promise you anything—an afterlife, rewards for good behaviour, protection from enemies, wealth, happiness, progeny, all the things that humans desire and pray for. No, Nature does not promise these things. Nature is a reward in itself. It is there, to be appreciated, to be understood, to be lived and loved. And in its way it gives us everything—the bounty and goodness of the earth, the sea, the sky. Food, water, the air we breathe. All the things we take for granted.