Normally, but not always, it was unbearable for me to sit outside on this disheveled acre in nature with even just a neighbor’s hyperactive leaf-blower insulting my senses.

This morning, however odd, I walked up the same hill with the same cup in hand, and was this time, astonished to feel at peace in the midst of the northern neighbor’s chain-sawing limbs  off of those two Eucalyptus trees you see up there…the normally felt bone-chilling noise in perfect unison with the dissonance of the wood chipper grinding the  dismembered into dust, whilst the southern neighbor weed-whacked with the gusto of what one might suspect vengeance sounds like, as the neighbor to the west clashed metal sideboards together that I, with surprising nonchalance, imagined runaway cymbals might sound like crashing down my ears.

In other words, I felt undisturbed through the hour or more of it all, and to my delight, I was able to easily slip deeper into peace with my eyes resting softly on the pale, thin olive tree fledgling close to me on the hill, on my left.

Such joy to witness the clusters of olive newbies tiny as pin heads dangling from their branches. They actually had me curling my lips up, aka, smiling, at them in awe, a fool on the hill.

I noted the birds could still be heard as if all was quiet on the western, northern and southern fronts.

I welcomed it all in. The thrill of birds. The shrill of humanity. The innocence of baby olives.

I wondered: how do you birds keep carrying on singing as usual, as if all is good, all is peace, all is well beneath and within the human cacophony  perceived as horror?

We just do.

As Humanity continues to squeak through puberty, the rest of nature seems patient. Maybe they sense that someday we humans will make it to the heights of our earthly relatives, as if the birds, along with the bees, the trees, and all life are certain that our high-tech race of humans will eventually catch up to them in the orchestra rows of adults living each day as a symphonic holiday on Mama Earth.

So why not let’s all fall in love as the song goes.