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by | October 26, 2026 · 11:03 am

Ancient Trees: Cathedrals of Nature and Keepers of Time

Ancient trees possess a majestic, timeless beauty. Their weathered trunks seem to hold the stories of generations long gone. They have stood through changing seasons, witnessed the rise and fall of human fortunes, and endured storms, wars, and the passing of centuries. Long after the people who planted them have disappeared, these silent giants remain, rooted in the earth and reaching towards the sky.

During a recent walk through the grounds of Kingston Lacy in Dorset, I found myself pondering these cathedrals of nature. Standing beneath their expansive canopies, I wondered what they might tell us if they could speak. What changes had they witnessed? What conversations, celebrations, and sorrows had unfolded in their shadow? How many generations had passed by, scarcely aware that these trees would outlive them all?

Perhaps their greatest wisdom lies in their silence.

The landscape at Kingston Lacy, in Dorset, United Kingdom, tells a story of changing ideas about wealth, beauty, and our relationship with the natural world. The estate’s avenues and parkland reflect the ambitions and tastes of successive generations of the Bankes family. In the nineteenth century, William John Bankes, an adventurer and landowner, helped transform the estate’s gardens and landscape. Among its notable features is Cedar Avenue, with trees grown from seeds brought back from Lebanon. These magnificent trees, now part of the estate’s historic character, are reminders of a time when exploration, wealth, and the desire to create something enduring found expression in the landscape itself.

As I stood beside these trees, I felt a profound sense of humility. Each began as a tiny seed, carrying the potential for a life far greater than its beginnings might suggest. With time, sunlight, water, and nourishment from the earth, it had grown into something magnificent. Its roots had reached deep into the soil while its branches stretched towards the heavens.

A tree does not grow in haste. It does not measure its progress against the achievements of others, nor does it seem troubled by the passing of time. It grows according to its own nature, season by season, year after year. Its strength lies not in resisting every change but in adapting to it. Branches break, leaves fall, and the trunk bears the scars of earlier storms. Yet life continues, finding new ways to grow around the wounds.

There is something deeply humbling about standing beside a tree that has lived through centuries of human history. It reminds us that our own lives, with all their ambitions, disappointments, and certainties, occupy only a brief moment in the larger unfolding of time. We tend to measure our lives in years and decades. Ancient trees invite us to think in centuries.

They also invite us to reconsider what it means to leave a legacy.

When I look at the great cathedrals and churches of medieval Europe, I wonder whether the architects and master builders drew inspiration from the trees that surrounded them. The soaring columns, branching arches, and vaulted ceilings of Gothic architecture evoke a forest, with stone pillars rising like trunks and ribs spreading overhead like branches. Sunlight filters through stained glass in much the same way that light finds its way through a canopy of leaves.

Perhaps the builders understood something we have largely forgotten: that the spaces we create can shape how we experience our place in the world. A cathedral was not simply a building. It was an expression of devotion, a gathering place for a community, and a monument intended to endure beyond the lives of those who constructed it. Generations of craftsmen contributed to structures they might never live to see completed, trusting that others would carry their work forward.

Today, we seem to have lost the long view.

Much of our modern world is shaped by speed, convenience, and the demand for immediate results. Buildings are often designed around short economic cycles, while public decisions are judged by their immediate political or financial returns. Politicians can be tempted to focus on the next election rather than the consequences of their choices for people who have not yet been born.

Of course, we cannot romanticize the past. Earlier generations also pursued power, exploited nature, and made decisions with devastating consequences. Nor is every modern building temporary or every political decision short-sighted. Yet there is a difference between creating something for immediate consumption and accepting responsibility for a world that will outlive us.

Ancient trees offer a challenge to this culture of immediacy. They embody a different understanding of time: one in which growth requires patience, resilience comes through adaptation, and what we do today may matter to people we will never meet.

Perhaps this is also a spiritual lesson.

For me, trees represent a meeting place between heaven and earth. Their roots reach into the darkness of the soil, drawing nourishment from a world hidden from our eyes. Their trunks rise through the space between earth and sky, while their branches reach towards the light. They hold these two worlds together without needing to explain the relationship between them.

There is something profoundly reassuring about this simple image. We, too, need roots and reach. We need a sense of belonging, a connection to the ground beneath our feet, and something beyond ourselves towards which we can grow. When either is missing, we may feel unmoored: caught up in our thoughts, disconnected from our bodies, or estranged from the natural world of which we are a part.

In a time when so many people experience spiritual disconnection, perhaps we do not always need another theory, another belief system or another explanation of life’s mysteries. Sometimes we need to step outside, slow down and pay attention to what has been here all along.

The next time you feel disconnected, try spending a few quiet minutes with a tree.

Find one that draws your attention. Stand beside it, or sit with your back resting gently against its trunk if that feels comfortable. Notice the texture of the bark against your skin. Feel the ground beneath your feet. Allow your breathing to settle into a natural rhythm.

As you inhale, imagine yourself opening to the sky above you, to the space and light beyond your immediate concerns. As you exhale, bring your attention downwards, towards the earth beneath you, towards the roots that anchor the tree and the ground that supports your own body.

There is no need to force an experience or expect anything extraordinary to happen. Simply remain present. Notice the movement of leaves, the sound of birds, the shifting light and the quiet rhythm of your breath. Let your attention move away from the endless stream of thoughts and return to the living world around you.

The tree will not ask you to believe anything. It will not judge your past or demand that you become someone else. It simply stands, rooted in the earth, reaching towards the light.

Although trees have no magical power to heal every wound, time spent among them can offer a genuine sense of calm, perspective and connection. Sometimes the change is subtle: a little less tension in the body, a little more space in the mind, a renewed awareness that we belong to something larger than ourselves.

Perhaps this is what I was searching for as I walked through Kingston Lacy. Not an answer to a question, but a reminder of something easy to forget: that life unfolds on a scale far greater than our individual concerns, and that we are not separate from the natural world but part of it.

Long after we have gone, the trees will continue their work. They will gather sunlight, draw water from the earth, shelter birds and insects, and offer their branches to the changing seasons. They will bear the marks of time without needing to understand time itself.

We do not have to live for centuries to learn from those who do. We only need to pause long enough to listen.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.

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by | October 19, 2026 · 2:03 pm

Walking the Thin Places

I have often been asked why I feel the need to go on a pilgrimage nearly every year. Why leave the comforts of home, carry everything I need in a small backpack, and spend weeks walking day after day along dusty paths, through forests, across mountains, and into unfamiliar landscapes? What is it that draws me back, time and again, to this seemingly simple act of putting one foot in front of the other?

The answer is not always easy to explain, because the most important things that happen on a deep walk are experiential and difficult to put into words. They are not necessarily found in the places visited or in the distance covered but in the gradual transformation of the relationship to the self on the one hand and the external world on the other.

During the first few days of a pilgrimage, my mind is often still occupied by the noise of the outside world. Thoughts about unfinished tasks, personal concerns, news headlines, and the countless demands of everyday life follow me onto the trail. Even though I may be walking through a beautiful landscape, I barely notice it. My attention remains fixed on the path immediately ahead, on the kilometers still to be covered, the next village, or the place where I will spend the night. My body is walking, but my mind would be elsewhere.

Then, almost imperceptibly, something begins to change.

After several days of walking, the constant chatter of the mind starts to subside. Nature starts moving closer. The landscape that had seemed little more than a backdrop gradually comes alive. I begin to hear the clicking of grasshoppers in the grass and the gentle buzzing of bees among the wildflowers. I no longer merely hear the birds; I begin to see them, to recognize their movements, and sometimes to identify their songs. A robin appears on a low branch, a skylark rises and hovers in the open sky, and a blackbird searches for food ahead of me.

I start noticing the different formations of clouds drifting across the blue sky, the changing contours of the mountains, and the distinct character of the peaks ahead. The air carries the scent of damp earth, wild herbs, and freshly mown grass. I become aware of the warmth of the sun on my skin, the coolness of a forest path, and the rhythm of my own footsteps. My breathing gradually settles into a natural cadence, and I begin to feel my body again. It is not something to be managed or pushed through the day but becomes an integral part of the world in which I am moving.

Nothing extraordinary has happened to the landscape. It is my perception that has changed.

The world has not suddenly become more beautiful. I have simply become more available to its beauty.

Perhaps this transformation is comparable to the experience of reading a good book. When we read, our imagination creates an inner world of images, voices, landscapes, and emotions. Each reader brings something unique to the experience, drawing upon memories, feelings, and associations that no filmmaker could entirely reproduce. This is why we are sometimes disappointed when a favorite book is adapted for the screen. The images presented to us may be compelling, even beautiful, but they cannot fully replace the private world that our own imagination has created and experienced.

A deep walk offers something similar. It allows an inner world to emerge, not through the images we consume, but through the attention we give to what is already there. The more fully we attend to the world, the more it reveals itself. We begin to see what was always present but remained unnoticed because the mind was elsewhere.

Perhaps this is one of the great paradoxes of modern life: we have access to more information, images, and experiences than any generation before us, yet we often struggle to be fully present to the miracle of life unfolding directly in front of us. We are physically here but mentally somewhere else, anticipating the future, revisiting the past, comparing ourselves with others, or reacting to a continuous stream of events over which we have little control.

A pilgrimage interrupts this pattern. For a few weeks, the familiar structures of everyday life fall away. There are fewer decisions to make, fewer possessions to maintain, and fewer distractions demanding our attention. Life becomes simpler. You walk, eat, rest and sleep. You encounter other people, sometimes sharing a conversation, sometimes exchanging no more than a greeting. You learn to accept the weather, the terrain, and the limits of the body. You cannot always control what the day brings, but you can learn to meet it as it comes.

This simplicity creates the space where you can begin to hear what has been drowned out by the noise of ordinary life.

I have come to understand that living fully is, in many ways, an act of deep presence. It is not enough to pass through the days, completing tasks and accumulating experiences. You must also be available to them. You must allow yourself to feel the warmth of the sun, to listen without immediately responding, to look without needing to name or judge everything you see, and to recognize the quiet movements of your inner life.

For me, this quality of presence is difficult to sustain in everyday surroundings. I can practice it at home, on a familiar walk, or during a moment of silence, but the habits of daily life have a way of reclaiming my attention. The mind returns to its familiar concerns, and the world becomes a collection of things to accomplish rather than a reality to encounter.

That is why I return to the pilgrimage trail. Walking for several weeks gives me the time and space to move beyond the surface of my habitual thoughts. It feels like a kind of detoxification of the mind. It is not an escape from the world but a gradual release from the compulsive need to react to it. As the mental noise recedes, something begins to realign. My priorities become clearer. What matters and what does not matter quite so much become easier to distinguish. I find myself less concerned with controlling life and more willing to participate in it.

And sometimes, in those moments of stillness that emerge through movement, I sense something for which I have never found an entirely satisfactory name.

It is as though a narrow crack begins to open onto a deeper dimension of existence, a window into what I might call the soul. I do not mean this in any necessarily religious sense. I mean the possibility of experiencing life beyond the familiar boundaries of the thinking mind and the separate self, the part that is so occupied with defining, evaluating, and defending itself that it can lose sight of its connection with everything else.

The more you train your attention to rest in the present moment, the wider this opening seems to become. You begin to experience yourself not merely as an individual moving through a landscape, but as a participant in a complex living whole. The wind, the earth, the trees, the birds and your breathing are no longer entirely separate but different expressions of the same unfolding reality.

When I walk long enough, and with sufficient openness, I sometimes begin to feel this truth rather than merely think about it.

That, ultimately, is why I keep walking. Not to arrive somewhere, but to become more fully present to the life that has always been there and is carrying me along.

This does not mean that the boundaries between ourselves and the world disappear. Rather, those boundaries become less absolute. For a moment, we no longer feel like isolated observers standing outside nature and looking in. We recognise that we belong to it. We have always belonged to it.

Perhaps this is what draws me back to the Camino year after year. It is not simply the physical challenge, the beauty of the landscapes, or the encounters with fellow pilgrims, although all of these have their place. It is the opportunity to rediscover a way of being that is easily lost amid the demands and distractions of modern life. Walking reminds me that I do not need to travel somewhere extraordinary to encounter something sacred. I need to become sufficiently present to recognize what is already here.

My greatest realization has been that spending time in nature can open our senses to a presence far greater than our individual concerns. Whether we call it the sacred, the mystery of existence, the natural order of things, or simply life itself is perhaps less important than the experience. We are not separate from this greater whole. We are one part of it, inseparably woven into its fabric.

And when I walk long enough, quietly enough, and with sufficient openness, I sometimes begin to feel this truth rather than merely think about it.

That, ultimately, is why I keep walking. Not to arrive somewhere, but to become more fully present to the life that is already carrying me along.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.

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by | October 12, 2026 · 11:00 am

The Crusade Against Empathy: Why Compassion Is a Human Strength, Not a Weakness

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
— Maya Angelou

There is something deeply troubling about the growing tendency to portray empathy as a weakness. In parts of today’s political and cultural debate, compassion is dismissed as sentimentality, and caring for the vulnerable is framed as a liability rather than a strength. This growing contempt for empathy strikes at the heart of the very values on which free and humane societies are built: human dignity, mutual respect, solidarity, and the recognition that our strength as a society lies not only in individual achievement, but also in how we care for one another.

This is particularly evident in the rhetoric of Elon Musk and other wealthy and influential figures who argue that excessive empathy threatens Western civilization. The same argument has gained traction in popular intellectual discourse. Canadian marketing professor Gad Saad, in his book Suicidal Empathy, portrays what he considers misguided empathy as a threat to Western societies, while psychologist Paul Bloom’s Against Empathy challenges the assumption that empathy is always a reliable guide to moral judgment. Both works have found a growing audience among readers questioning the role of emotion in public life, although their arguments and conclusions differ. Saad, in particular, criticises what he sees as the elevation of empathy above reason.

There is a legitimate debate to be had about the limits of empathy. Emotions can cloud judgment. Compassion can be manipulated. The desire to please everyone can prevent us from making difficult decisions.

But none of this establishes that empathy itself is a weakness. It establishes that, like any human capacity, empathy needs to be balanced with reason, discernment, and boundaries.

The real question is not whether we should abandon empathy, but what kind of society we create when we begin to treat it with contempt.

Empathy is an evolutionary advantage

The popular image of evolution as a ruthless struggle in which only the strongest survive owes much to an oversimplified understanding of Darwinian theory. Survival has never depended on physical strength or individual competition alone. Cooperation, social bonds, mutual support and the ability to respond to the needs of others have been key aspects of our evolution as a species.

Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, in Mothers and Others (2009), explores how cooperative child-rearing and shared caregiving helped shape human sociality. Human children are exceptionally dependent, and our ancestors’ capacity to cooperate in raising and protecting them was a significant evolutionary advantage.

Our species did not flourish simply because some individuals defeated others. We also survived because people cared for children, supported injured members of their communities, shared knowledge and worked together in the face of danger.

Empathy is not the only explanation for these behaviours, and cooperation should not be confused with unconditional self-sacrifice. But the evidence challenges the simplistic notion that ruthlessness is the natural foundation of human success.

Our ability to care for one another is part of what has made us human.

The difference between empathy and weakness

One of the problems with the current backlash against empathy is that it often conflates several different things: emotional identification, compassion, people-pleasing, moral judgment and the willingness to tolerate harmful behaviour.

They are not the same.

Empathy allows us to understand something of another person’s experience. Compassion motivates us to respond to suffering. Neither requires us to agree with everyone, excuse wrongdoing or abandon our own interests.

We can empathize with someone without endorsing their actions. We can understand the circumstances that lead a person to behave destructively without excusing the harm they cause. And we can establish firm boundaries while treating another human being with dignity.

This is not weakness. It is emotional maturity.

The strongest form of empathy is not indiscriminate agreement. It is the ability to remain open to another person’s humanity while retaining the capacity to think critically.

Why empathetic leadership works

Research on leadership and organisational behaviour has repeatedly associated empathy with better interpersonal relationships, stronger trust and more effective collaboration.

The Center for Creative Leadership has reported associations between empathetic leadership and job performance. Research into ethical leadership likewise suggests that the ability to understand other people’s perspectives can help leaders recognise the human consequences of their decisions.

Empathy does not guarantee good judgment, and it cannot replace competence. But leaders who understand how their decisions affect others are better placed to build trust, address conflict and create environments in which people feel able to contribute.

The Businessolver State of Workplace Empathy reports have also documented a persistent gap between the importance employees attach to empathy and how much empathy they believe their workplaces demonstrate.

These findings challenge the assumption that compassion is incompatible with effectiveness. In many settings, understanding people is not an alternative to achieving results. It is part of how sustainable results are achieved.

What kind of society do we want?

The implications extend far beyond the workplace.

A society organised around the idea that the strongest, wealthiest and most powerful deserve the greatest respect risks confusing success with moral worth. It can begin to treat poverty as personal failure, vulnerability as inadequacy and social support as an undeserved concession.

This is the danger of Social Darwinism: not evolutionary biology itself, but the attempt to turn a selective interpretation of nature into a justification for social inequality and indifference.

A humane society does not have to deny personal responsibility, reward effort or discourage ambition. It can value all these things while recognising that people do not begin life with equal opportunities, equal resources or equal capacities. Illness, disability, bereavement and economic hardship can affect anyone.

How we respond to these realities reveals something fundamental about our collective values.

Many of the moral traditions that have shaped Western civilisation, including Christianity, place care for the sick, the poor, the stranger and the vulnerable near the centre of ethical life. The Good Samaritan is remembered not because he demonstrated superior power, but because he stopped to help someone whom others had passed by.

That principle is not exclusively Christian, of course. It appears in different forms across religious, philosophical and humanist traditions.

The point is that a society’s moral strength is measured not only by what its most successful members achieve, but also by how it treats those who are struggling.

Empathy, trust and human flourishing

Consider Finland and the other Nordic countries, which have consistently ranked highly in international assessments of life satisfaction. Their experience suggests that social trust, reliable public institutions, economic security and a strong sense of collective responsibility can contribute to human well-being.

Empathy alone does not explain these outcomes. Nor should the Nordic model be romanticised or treated as a perfect society. But these examples challenge the notion that a healthy society must be built primarily on ruthless competition and individual self-interest.

When people believe that others can be trusted, that institutions will generally treat them fairly and that hardship will not necessarily leave them abandoned, social cooperation becomes easier. Trust encourages participation; participation can strengthen community; and a sense of belonging can help protect people against isolation.

At the level of everyday life, the same principle applies. Feeling understood can ease loneliness, strengthen relationships and make difficult experiences more bearable. Empathy cannot solve every problem, but it can change how people experience the problems they face.

The real strength is to care without losing yourself

There is a danger in turning empathy into an unquestionable virtue. We can become overwhelmed by the suffering of others. We can favour people who resemble us, overlook the needs of strangers or allow emotion to override evidence. Empathy needs the guidance of reason, fairness and ethical principles.

But the answer to these limitations is not to wage a crusade against empathy. It is to develop a more mature understanding of it.

We need the courage to confront wrongdoing, the clarity to distinguish facts from feelings, the discipline to set boundaries and the compassion to recognise suffering even when it is inconvenient.

These qualities are not mutually exclusive.

In a world increasingly shaped by political polarisation, economic insecurity and the temptation to regard opponents as less than fully human, empathy may be more important than ever. It allows us to disagree without dehumanising, to hold people accountable without denying their dignity, and to recognise that another person’s suffering matters even when it does not directly affect us.

The question raised by the current backlash against empathy is ultimately a question about the kind of civilisation we wish to build.

Do we want a world in which power determines whose suffering matters? Or one in which strength includes the willingness to protect those who have less of it?

Empathy is not the abandonment of reason. It is the recognition that reason without humanity can become an instrument of indifference.

A society that celebrates power while ridiculing compassion may become more competitive, but it will not necessarily become wiser, healthier or happier.

The measure of your humanity is not how successful you distance yourself from weakness. It is whether you can recognize vulnerability in others and in yourself.

Because in the end, the question is not whether we can afford empathy. It is what we stand to lose when we no longer value it.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.

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by | September 28, 2026 · 9:42 am

The Wisdom of Silence

There is something I have been thinking about lately: how much of what we say actually needs to be said in a world that demands continuous expression and reaction.

We comment. We react. We post. We answer. We defend ourselves. We tell people what we think. We respond to something before we have even had time to understand why it has stirred something within.

More than at any other time in history, we have the technology to make our reactions instantly public. But ancient wisdom offers a very different possibility.

In Pirkei Avot, or Ethics of the Fathers, a collection of Jewish ethical teachings dating back almost two thousand years, there is a remarkable emphasis on the discipline of speech.

One teaching says:

“I have found nothing better for the body than silence.”

At first, that may sound strange. For why would silence be described as something so beneficial?

I don’t think the rabbis were simply talking about keeping quiet. They were pointing toward something deeper: the space between what you feel and what you express. And it is this space that can become enormously important.

Because not every thought needs to become a word, and not every emotion needs to become an immediate accusation or provocation that requires response. And not every disagreement needs to turn into a heated argument.

The pause before the word

Think about what happens when someone says something that wounds or angers you. Your first impulse may be to respond immediately and to defend yourself. You want to be right and want them to know that. You might even want to hurt them back. Yet, if you crate even a small pause between the impulse and the response, something shifts.

You can ask yourself:

Is this worth saying?

What is motivating me to say it?

Am I trying to clarify something—or simply trying to win an argument?

Will these words bring something into the world that I actually want to create?

That pause is not weakness but can turn into inner freedom.

Silence isn’t passivity

There is a danger, of course, in romanticizing silence and it can become avoidance.

There are moments when you need to speak out, to defend someone, to confront injustice, to establish a boundary, and to tell the truth.

The wisdom of silence isn’t that you should never speak. It is becoming aware of why you are speaking.

There is a profound difference between speaking because something needs to be said and speaking because you cannot tolerate the discomfort of remaining silent. And perhaps that is one of the great challenges of our time. We have become extraordinarily good at expressing ourselves.

But are we equally good at listening?

What happens when you don’t pause?

Words have consequences. A careless sentence can remain in another person’s memory for decades. A harsh word spoken in anger can change or destroy a relationship. Gossip can damage someone’s reputation who isn’t even present to defend themselves. Words now don’t simply disappear into the air. They remain a permanent record online.

The ancient rabbis obviously could not have imagined social media, smartphones or the speed with which words now travel across the world. Yet their concern was remarkably similar.

What happens when human beings fail to discipline their speech?

Silence creates a space for something deeper

For me, this connects with something much larger than communication. Silence creates space. And in that space we sometimes encounter something beneath the constant noise of the head mind. You actually start noticing what is happening within.

Perhaps there is fear beneath the anger. Beneath the need to be right might be insecurity. When you stop reacting, you might discover that there is not urgent need to respond at all. Silence then becomes a spiritual practise.

Before you speak

The next time you feel the impulse to respond immediately, wait. Take a deep breath. Inhale and exhale.

Notice what is happening inside you.

Then ask yourself:

Does this need to be said?

And if it does:

Can I say it without adding unnecessary harm?

Maybe that is what the ancient wisdom is pointing toward.

Not silence for its own sake.

But conscious speech.

Words chosen rather than words discharged.

Words that emerge from reflection rather than reaction.

Because ultimately, the quality of your life is shaped not only by what you believe or what you think. It is shaped by what you do with that which arises from within.

Sometimes the wisest thing you can do with a thought, an emotion or an angry impulse is simply to let it pass and to remain silent.

And in that space, perhaps, you discover a little more freedom, a little more compassion and a little more wisdom.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.

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by | September 15, 2026 · 10:38 am

Where the Earth feels thin

There are places in the world where the boundary between the ordinary and something deeper feels remarkably thin.

Ancient peoples understood this instinctively. Long before maps, property boundaries and modern planning regulations, they paid careful attention to where they built their temples, sacred groves and places of worship. Certain springs, mountains, caves, rocks, forests and hilltops were regarded as places where the human world came closer to the divine. The location itself mattered. Sacredness was not simply something that could be brought into a building; sometimes it was already present in the landscape.

We might call this a thin place—a place where the distance between the visible and invisible worlds seems diminished.

I have often wondered whether we have lost something of this sensitivity.

There is, of course, another side to it. Some places seem to carry the opposite quality. Landscapes marked by violence, suffering or tragedy can retain an atmosphere that is difficult to explain rationally. A battlefield, an abandoned concentration camp, a house where terrible things happened, a village emptied by war—these places can seem to hold an echo of what occurred there.

Perhaps this is memory embedded in landscape. Perhaps it is our own imagination responding to what we know happened. Perhaps there is something more subtle.

I don’t pretend to know.

But I have noticed something while walking.

On my pilgrimage journeys, I have sometimes entered a village and experienced an almost immediate sense of lightness. Nothing dramatic happened. There was no revelation, no voice from heaven, no mystical apparition. Simply a feeling that the place was alive.

The streets were clean and cared for. Flowers appeared in window boxes. Doors were open. People greeted the pilgrim with a smile. There were small cafés, benches, churches and places where people could pause and meet one another. Children played. Someone was tending a garden. Life seemed to flow naturally.

And then, sometimes, I would enter another place and feel quite different.

The shutters were closed. Houses appeared empty even when they were occupied. There were few places where people could gather. Gardens were neglected. Buildings were deteriorating. The streets seemed strangely silent. It was as though life had withdrawn.

I cannot prove that these impressions have anything to do with a measurable “energy frequency.” Nor do I think we need to turn every intuitive response into a supernatural explanation.

But I have learned to pay attention to such feelings.

Walking slows you down sufficiently to notice things that you would normally rush past. You see the quality of a village not simply through its architecture but through the way people inhabit it. You notice whether people sit outside their houses, whether they greet strangers, whether children have somewhere to play, whether churches are open, whether gardens are cultivated, whether there is a sense of care.

Perhaps what youvexperience as the “energy” of a place is sometimes the accumulated expression of the people who live there.

And perhaps the relationship works in both directions: you shape a place, and a place shapes you.

This has also made me think about why certain landscapes seem to have inspired some of humanity’s greatest thinkers, painters, poets and writers.

We tend to imagine inspiration as something that happens inside the individual mind. The genius sits at a desk, picks up a brush or opens a notebook, and creates something extraordinary.

But perhaps creativity is also a conversation with place.

Recently, walking through the countryside around Chawton, I found myself thinking about Jane Austen.

There is something about that landscape that makes her books feel less abstract. The lanes, hedgerows, fields, wooded paths and gently rolling countryside provide a physical world in which her characters seem entirely at home. Walking through what is called Jane Austen country, one begins to understand why this particular landscape could have nourished such a precise observer of human nature.

Austen did not simply write about people. She wrote about people in relationship to place—houses, estates, gardens, villages, drawing rooms, roads and landscapes. Social life and landscape were inseparable.

And perhaps that is true of creativity generally.

Think of the painters who were transformed by particular landscapes, the poets who returned again and again to the same hills or rivers, composers like Bach who found inspiration in the countryside, or the writers like Dickens who needed to walk before they could write.

Maybe the landscape doesn’t simply provide a backdrop but participates.

There is an old idea that certain places are “charged” with something greater. We might describe that in religious language, psychological language, ecological language or simply as a heightened sensitivity to beauty and history.

I am increasingly comfortable leaving the question open.

For me, pilgrimage is partly about learning to enter that openness.

When you walk, you surrender some of your usual control. You move at the speed of your feet. You become attentive to weather, trees, birdsong, stone walls, ancient paths and the changing light. You begin to sense that the landscape is not merely scenery through which you are passing.

It becomes a participant in the journey.

And occasionally, without quite knowing why, you enter a place and feel something shift within you.

The world seems a little more spacious. The mind becomes quieter and the heart feels lighter.

Nothing has necessarily changed, except the capacity to be more present.

Perhaps that is what a thin place really is.

Not necessarily a place where heaven breaks through into earth, but a place where you become thin enough to notice what has always been there.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.

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by | August 25, 2026 · 4:28 pm

Living As If You Will Never Die

The Dalai Lama once said that what surprised him most about the human condition was that “Man sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

The German mystic Meister Eckhart, writing seven centuries earlier, arrived at something similar from the opposite direction. For Eckhart, death was not an event waiting for us at the end of life but a practice for the whole of it: “If you want the kernel, you must break the shell.” He meant that the self we cling to — our roles, our possessions, our five-year plans — is the shell. Only by letting it crack, again and again, do we get near the kernel, which he called the ground of the soul. A person who has never rehearsed that letting-go meets death, when it finally comes, as a stranger.

Confronting our mortality is anathema in Western culture. We don’t talk about it, and when a loved one dies, we’re expected to “get over it” and function again as soon as possible. Cultural icons are expected to stay forever young. The dying are outsourced to hospitals and hospices, and the dead are buried in well-manicured cemeteries far off the beaten track.

I had an intense conversation with Catherine Duncan, author and hospice chaplain, on the LivingToBe podcast this week. She has guided hundreds of people during the last moments of their journey on earth. What stands out is the same pattern that repeats itself over and over again. What was deemed as important in life such as money, status and possessions falls away. What remains is only peace, love and forgiveness. Death can teach us what is important in life such as those magical moments that we often do not recognize in the business of life.

Confronting mortality head-on

One of the reasons behind our mental health crisis and addiction epidemic is that we don’t confront our mortality head-on. Instead we compare ourselves to the Joneses next door and wait for the “happy” life to arrive — when we retire, when we get rich, when we find the perfect partner, when we have that luxury car or that beautiful home.

Eckhart had a word for this waiting: he called it living for the sake of a reward rather than living itself. He preached that people who work only “in order to get” something — heaven, wealth, peace of mind — never actually arrive, because their attention stays fixed on the getting. The people of Bhutan seem to have found the alternative he was pointing to.

There’s a reason the people of the small southeast Asian country of Bhutan are regarded as among the happiest and most contented in the world. As in the world of our ancestors, death is part of everyday reality there.

The Buddhist country encourages its people to think about death for a few minutes each day. Paintings, artwork, and house decorations often feature death. Funerals are elaborate three-week events, with the body kept in the home before being slowly cremated over fragrant juniper wood in front of hundreds of friends and relatives.

In Bhutan, death is seen simply as a transition to another dimension. The spiritual disconnect in Western culture has left no place for death, or for the rituals that once surrounded it. I’ve lost a good share of family and friends over the past five years — each loss has jolted me back to the age-old question: what am I doing with the days I have left?

Because death is the elephant in the room, we lurch into collective grief when a well-known figure suddenly dies. The University of Oxford Centre for Suicide Research found that the overall suicide rate in England and Wales rose by 17 percent in the four weeks after Princess Diana’s funeral in September 1997, compared with the average for that period over the four previous years.

A review of these cases suggested that Diana’s death worked largely through “amplification of personal losses and exacerbation of existing distress” — grief for a stranger unlocking grief that was already there, unaddressed.

History shows that when catastrophe strikes, faith tends to move in one of three directions. Some people become more rigid and fearful, reaching for certainty in the middle of chaos. Others lose faith entirely, unable to reconcile suffering with belief in a loving God. And some find a deeper faith — one rooted not in easy answers, but in compassion, humility, and solidarity with others. Which direction we take often depends on whether we’ve already done the work of facing mortality, or whether death arrives as an ambush.

Talking about the human condition

We need to talk about the human condition — about death, our mortality, and the fact that life as we know it ends. My work is helping people reclaim enough vitality and energy to live the life they’re meant to live, rather than the one they’ve settled for.

Eckhart’s shell-and-kernel image is useful here, because he wasn’t just talking about the moment of dying. He meant it as daily practice: letting go of the version of yourself built from job title, bank balance, and other people’s opinions, so that something truer underneath has room to breathe. “The eye with which I see God,” he wrote, “is the same eye with which God sees me.” Strip away enough of the shell, he’s saying, and the distance between the seer and the seen collapses. That’s a hard sentence to sit with, but it’s also a way of saying: stop postponing yourself.

Are you living the life you’re destined to live?

Are you merely existing, or living the life you’re destined to live? Are you stuck in a job or relationship that drains most of your energy? Are you waiting for the day you can finally start living?

Procrastination and fear are the biggest obstacles to raising consciousness and growing spiritually. When you’re doing what’s in alignment with your soul’s purpose, you will — to quote Rumi — feel a river moving in you with joy.

If these questions stay with you, you might find their sharpest form in my novel Sages, Saints and Sinners, set during the Black Death — a time when an entire society was forced to confront mortality on a mass scale, with no hospitals or hospices to look away to. It follows what happens to people, faith, and community when death can no longer be outsourced or postponed.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

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by | August 18, 2026 · 9:23 am

How Language Shapes  Mind, Body and Soul

The other day, I came across a wonderful initiative that gives children something far more valuable than a toy: books and the opportunity to discover the power of words from an early age.

Through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, registered children receive a free, age-appropriate book every month from birth until their fifth birthday. It is a simple but powerful idea—helping children develop a love of reading while giving them access to a richer world of language, imagination, and ideas.

It also made me reflect on something we often underestimate: The words we hear, read, speak and repeat influence how we think, how we feel, how we relate to others, and, increasingly, research suggests, how our bodies respond to stress and emotion.

From the first stories we hear as children to the language that surrounds us as adults, the words we live with help shape our lives.

When leaders normalise belittling, insulting, humiliating or threatening language, they give their followers permission to do the same. We can see the consequences particularly clearly on social media, where emotionally charged discussions can deteriorate rapidly into personal attacks, contempt and hostility. A disagreement about an idea becomes an attack on the person.

This matters because language is not psychologically neutral. The words we repeatedly encounter and use influence attention, interpretation, and emotional responses. 

Stress, anger, and hostility can activate physiological systems involved in the body’s stress response, while positive emotions, social connection, and a sense of meaning can support psychological resilience.

Repetition of negative language

Repeated exposure to words and messages associated with anger, fear and hostility can reinforce particular patterns of attention and interpretation. Over time, this may contribute to a more threatening or pessimistic perception of the world.

There is an important distinction, however: words do not automatically cause disease, and the science is more nuanced than the popular claim that simply hearing a negative word raises cortisol or damages the body. What matters is the broader psychological response—particularly when threatening or hostile language becomes persistent, personally meaningful and part of a chronic environment of stress.

A landmark 2015 study published in Psychological Science analysed millions of Twitter messages from 1,347 U.S. counties. Researchers found that county-level use of language expressing anger, anxiety, negative relationships and disengagement was associated with higher rates of atherosclerotic heart-disease mortality, while positive-emotion and engagement language showed protective associations. The researchers reported that their language-based model predicted cardiovascular mortality better than a model combining ten conventional demographic, socioeconomic and health variables.

These findings were striking—but they should not be interpreted as proof that negative words themselves cause heart disease. The study was observational and conducted at the community level, and subsequent methodological criticism has questioned how robust and generalisable the associations are. What the research does support is a fascinating possibility: the emotional language circulating within a community may act as a window into its collective psychological climate.

Other research provides a more direct connection between stress and language. Experimental studies have found that people experiencing greater physiological stress—including higher cortisol and heart-rate responses—tend to produce less cognitively complex speech. More recent research is also exploring whether characteristics of speech can themselves be used as indicators of stress.

The potential of positive language

The opposite is also worth cultivating. Kindness, gratitude, appreciation, compassion and encouragement can change the quality of our interactions and strengthen social bonds. And strong social relationships are among the most important resources we have for psychological resilience and wellbeing.

Research on self-affirmation offers an interesting insight into how constructive language can work. In laboratory studies, reflecting on personally important values activated brain regions involved in self-related processing and positive valuation. In one study, these neural responses were subsequently associated with changes in sedentary behaviour.

This does not mean that repeating positive words is a magical cure. Nor does it mean that we should suppress difficult emotions or pretend that everything is wonderful. Healthy language can acknowledge suffering while still leaving room for possibility:

I am struggling—but I can seek help.

I disagree with you—but I can still respect you.

This is difficult—but it is not necessarily hopeless.

Such language does something important: it creates psychological space. Instead of narrowing our attention around threat, blame and fear, it can help us recognise choices, relationships and possibilities.

Words, mantras and prayer

This may help explain why human beings across cultures have used mantras, prayers, chants and contemplative phrases for thousands of years.

The benefit may not lie simply in the meaning of the words. Repetition slows attention, reduces distraction and can be accompanied by rhythmic breathing. Studies of contemplative practices have found associations with changes in autonomic regulation, including heart-rate variability, although the evidence varies considerably according to the practice and study design.

Research into music and prayer has also suggested that slow rhythmic structures can influence cardiovascular rhythms. Work examining musical tempo and autonomic responses has highlighted the role of slow breathing and rhythm in producing calming physiological effects.

This offers a more scientifically cautious way of understanding the experience many people report when listening to or singing something such as Ave Maria, whether in the settings of Schubert, Gounod or other classical arrangements. The combination of familiar words, melody, repetition, breath, memory and spiritual meaning can create a profound sense of calm and emotional safety.

For a person of faith, there is an additional dimension that science cannot easily measure: prayer can provide a sense of relationship, trust, meaning and transcendence. These subjective experiences may themselves be important sources of psychological resilience.

Read good words

There is another simple way of nourishing our inner vocabulary: read books.

In an age dominated by short posts, headlines, notifications and rapidly changing fragments of information, sustained reading offers something very different. A book asks you to remain with an idea, follow an argument, inhabit another person’s experience and encounter words in context.

Reading also exercises language itself. It exposes you to a richer vocabulary, more complex sentence structures, metaphors, stories and unfamiliar perspectives. This matters not only intellectually but potentially for healthy ageing.

A 14-year longitudinal study found that older adults who reported reading at least weekly were less likely to experience cognitive decline over six, ten and fourteen years than those who read less frequently. The association remained after adjustment for relevant covariates.

A separate 2024 study of older Japanese adults found an association between childhood availability of books and cognitive function later in life, particularly among participants with lower educational attainment. The researchers also identified an association involving the volume of the left superior temporal cortex, an area important for language and related cognitive functions. Because this was an observational study, it cannot establish that books themselves caused the difference—but it adds to the growing evidence that a life rich in reading and language may be beneficial for cognitive ageing.

Perhaps, then, we should think of vocabulary as a kind of mental landscape.

If your daily diet consists largely of words such as threat, enemy, stupid, hate, crisis, failure and fear, you are repeatedly exposing your attention to a narrow emotional vocabulary.

But if you also make room for words such as curiosity, courage, gratitude, wonder, forgiveness, possibility, beauty, compassion, stillness, love and hope, you give the mind more possibilities with which to interpret experience.

The goal is not to eliminate negative words. Anger can alert to injustice. Fear can protect from danger. Grief gives expression to loss. Difficult words have their rightful place.

The deeper question is:

What kind of language do you want to live with within?

And perhaps an equally important for everyone is:

What kind of emotional climate are your words creating for the people around you?

Words are small things. But repeated millions of times, they can become attitudes, attitudes can become behaviours, and behaviours can become culture.

Choose them carefully.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.

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by | June 30, 2026 · 1:59 pm

On Abundance and the Squeeze

Over the past few months, I have been squeezed by the Spanish tax authority in a way I can only describe as grossly unjust. An anonymous bureaucracy can be exceptionally cruel and indifferent — arbitrary decisions handed down by people who will never see your face, in a process over which you have no control. Amid the anger and frustration, I found myself asking the universe what lessons this situation holds for me personally, sorely testing my own faith over fear.

The first thing I am beginning to understand is that abundance is not a reward for good behaviour. The universe does not withhold it because you have done something wrong. What I am experiencing — this feeling of being squeezed from the outside — is one of the oldest initiations on the spiritual path. The Celts would say you are standing at a thin place, that permeable boundary between what was and what is trying to be born.

Money is one of the most misunderstood subjects in spiritual teaching. The familiar saying that “money is the root of all evil” is a misquotation. What Paul actually wrote in his first letter to Timothy is that the love of money is the root of all evil — a crucial distinction. Jesus himself did not condemn wealth. He pointed, again and again, to the danger of attachment. “Where your treasure is,” he said, “there your heart will be also.” When the heart anchors itself to external resources for its sense of safety, it has already lost its freedom. The lesson, then, is rarely about money itself, which is merely an exchange commodity. It is almost always about trust.

Where does your sense of safety and trust live?

Ask honestly: where does your sense of safety live? If it lives in the balance of an account, the universe — in its ruthless compassion — will go directly to that place and shake it. Not to punish, but to show you that the house was built on sand, and that there is rock underneath if you are willing to dig.

The Celtic teacher John Philip Newell, drawing on the deep well of the Iona tradition, speaks of the soul as something that cannot be diminished by what is done to us from the outside. Peregrine monks — those early Celtic wanderers who cast themselves onto the sea without oars — understood that security was never found in possessions or permanence. Their freedom came precisely from having so little to lose. That is a radical kind of abundance.

Injustice, when it arrives, asks a question beneath all the noise: Am I willing to hold my integrity and my peace even when the external world behaves badly? That is not passivity. That is spiritual sovereignty.

Abundance, in its deepest sense, is a state of inner orientation before it is ever an outer condition. The mystics did not teach prosperity. They taught permeability — the capacity to remain open when everything in you wants to contract and defend. This does not mean surrendering the fight. What deserves to be contested should be contested, with clarity and persistence. But the fight must not become all-consuming, must not cloud the mind with bitterness or corrode the spirit with anger.

It is about returning, again and again, to that inner temple that cannot be taxed — and remembering that true abundance has always lived there.

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S. In the coming days, I’ll share more about Letters from the Threshold, a Sunday letter where I explore many of these themes in greater depth. For those who find value in thoughtful reflection and deeper inquiry, there will soon be an opportunity to subscribe.

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by | May 4, 2026 · 5:44 pm

Lessons from the 14th Century Plague

There are places where history feels very present and where the emotional residue of another age still clings to stone and air. Puig de Maria, rising above the town of Pollença, on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca is one such place. It is not simply an old monastery, but built as a human answer to a dark time.

In 1348, as the Black Death swept across Europe. Suffocating fear was everywhere. Death arrived without logic or mercy, dismantling the illusion of control that underpinned medieval life. It is in this context that Puig de Maria was conceived: not as an architectural ambition, but as a cry to the divine.

The decision to build a sanctuary on a mountain summit high above the town was not accidental. It carried symbolic weight. To ascend is to separate—from contagion, from chaos, from the unbearable proximity of suffering. But it is also to draw nearer to God, to meaning, to the possibility that fear can be held within something larger than itself.

In Sages, Saints and Sinners, I return to a question that refuses to stay buried: what becomes of us when certainty collapses? When the structures we trusted—faith, order, meaning—no longer hold, who do we become? Set against the desolation of the 14th-century plague, a time when vast stretches of Europe fell silent and entire communities vanished, the novel steps into that rupture. It is not only a story of loss, but of what emerges in its wake—of the fragile, defiant ways human beings rediscover courage, meaning, and even love when everything familiar has been stripped away.

Some retreat into despair. Others are in denial. But there is a third path, rarer and more demanding—the transmutation of fear into courage, and anxiety into love.

Puig de Maria stands as a physical manifestation of that third path.

The people who built it were not free of fear. They were defined by it. And yet, instead of allowing fear to contract their world, they expanded it vertically. They climbed. They carried stone up a mountain in the midst of plague, and in doing so, enacted a radical defiance: fear would not have the final word.

There is a discipline in the refusal to be mentally captured by catastrophe.

The monastery that emerged—first a chapel, then a place of ongoing devotion—became more than a sanctuary. It became a container. Within its walls, fear was transformed. Ritual, prayer, and community gave structure to what would otherwise have been overwhelming. The unknown was met not with paralysis, but with presence.

This is the essence of transmutation. Not the removal of darkness, but its reworking into something that can sustain life.

Walking up to Puig de Maria today, the path winds in steady, deliberate curves. It is not a punishing climb, but it demands attention. There is a rhythm to it—step, breath, step—that mirrors something older than the path itself. Pilgrimage is never only about arrival. It is about what is shed along the way.

Halfway up, the town below begins to recede. Perspective shifts. What felt immediate loosens its grip. By the time you reach the summit, something subtle but unmistakable has occurred: distance has been created, not just physically, but internally.

This is the overlooked power of sacred geography. It externalises an inner movement.

At the top, the monastery remains austere. A tower and thick walls. A chapel that holds silence rather than spectacle. There is no excess here, no attempt to impress. It was never meant for comfort in the modern sense. It was meant for clarity.

And clarity, in times of crisis, is everything.

In our own age, fear has taken on different forms, but its structure remains familiar. Uncertainty, fragmentation, and a sense that the ground is less stable than we were led to believe. The temptation is the same as it was in the 14th century: to collapse inward, to narrow, to protect.

But Puig de Maria offers another template.

Climb.

Not away from reality, but toward a broader vantage point. Build—not necessarily in stone, but in practice—structures that can hold anxiety without being defined by it. Create spaces, inner and outer, where fear can be acknowledged, but not enthroned.

The plague did not end because a monastery was built. Suffering was not avoided. But meaning was forged in the midst of it.

And meaning is what allows endurance to become transformation.

In Sages, Saints and Sinners, the figures who endure are not those who escape fear, but those who metabolise it. They refuse its finality. They insist, against all evidence, that love and courage remain alive.

Puig de Maria asks a question that is as relevant now as it was then:

When fear rises, will you descend into it—or will you climb?

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article you might be interested in reading: Sages, Saints and Sinners Get it today on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and where all good books are sold.

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by | April 27, 2026 · 6:40 pm

The Hidden Costs of Rural Decline

I recently drove through rural South Africa on my way to a school reunion—one of those rare gatherings where time folds in on itself and five decades seem like yesterday. The landscape should have been familiar: wide horizons, scattered farmsteads, towns that once pulsed with industry. But what struck me most was not recognition—it was absence.

Roads pitted with potholes slowed the journey, but it was the towns that told the deeper story. Buildings sagged under neglect. Shopfronts stood empty or half-occupied. Once pristine and well-kept, towns seemed to have been abandoned to time. This was not just decay. It was a withdrawal. A slow draining away of people, energy, and purpose.

In my hometown of Dundee in KwaZulu-Natal alone, the closure of a sweets factory, a glass plant, and several coal mines has, over the years, stripped away thousands of jobs. At the reunion, I learned that the impact reached even further: a steelworks in the neighbouring town of Newcastle had also shut down, costing another 3,000 livelihoods.

And this is not a uniquely South African story.

Across the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Germany, I have witnessed similar patterns unfold. Rural communities hollow out as younger generations leave in search of education, employment, and opportunity in cities. What remains are aging populations, shrinking tax bases, and a fraying social fabric. The causes are well documented—economic centralization, mechanization of agriculture, the pull of urban opportunity—but the consequences run deeper than statistics.

Dislocation Without Language

For those who leave, the move to the city often brings material improvement: better jobs, better services, broader networks. But something less tangible is lost.

Rural life, at its best, offers continuity. It binds identity to place. You are not just an individual; you are someone’s neighbor, someone’s history, part of a shared narrative that stretches across generations. When people leave, that continuity fractures.

In cities, identity becomes more fluid—but also more fragile. Relationships are often transactional, time-bound, and contingent. Community must be constructed rather than inherited. For many, this produces a subtle but persistent sense of dislocation: a feeling of being nowhere in particular.

The question then arises: are people happier?

The answer is not straightforward. Urban environments tend to score higher on measures of economic well-being and access to services. But they also correlate with higher levels of loneliness, anxiety, and social isolation. Rural areas, despite economic hardship, often report stronger social cohesion and a greater sense of belonging—at least where communities remain intact.

So the trade-off is not simply between poverty and prosperity. It is between different forms of wealth—material and relational.

The Social Cost

When rural areas decline, society loses more than population density. It loses balance.

Healthy societies depend on a diversity of spaces: urban centers of innovation, suburban zones of stability, and rural regions that anchor culture, tradition, and food production. When one of these weakens, the system becomes distorted.

Depopulated rural areas often enter a downward spiral. As people leave, services close—schools, clinics, shops. This, in turn, makes the area less viable for those who remain, accelerating further out-migration. Political attention shifts elsewhere. Infrastructure deteriorates. Eventually, these regions become peripheral not just geographically, but economically and politically.

This has consequences for social cohesion. When large segments of the population feel left behind, trust erodes—both in institutions and in the broader social contract. The divide between “somewhere” and “anywhere” populations widens: those rooted in place versus those who are mobile and globally connected. This divide increasingly shapes political outcomes across many countries.

The Cultural Loss: Memory Without Custodians

Rural communities are not just economic units; they are repositories of memory.

They carry dialects, customs, ways of life that cannot be easily transplanted into urban settings. When these communities empty out, cultural knowledge dissipates. Traditions survive as fragments—revived occasionally for tourism or nostalgia—but lose their lived context.

What disappears is not just heritage, but a particular way of understanding the world: slower, more cyclical, more attuned to land and season. In its place emerges a more standardized, globalized culture—efficient, connected, but often detached.

Can the Trend Be Reversed?

There are attempts—some promising, many insufficient.

Remote work has reopened the possibility of living outside cities, at least for certain professions. Targeted investment in infrastructure—digital connectivity, transport, healthcare—can make rural areas viable again. Policies that support local enterprise, sustainable agriculture, and decentralized energy systems can stabilize regional economies.

More fundamentally, the question is one of value: what do we, as societies, choose to preserve?

If rural areas are seen merely as economically inefficient, their decline will continue. If, however, they are recognized as essential to social resilience, cultural continuity, and even psychological well-being, then their renewal becomes a strategic priority rather than a sentimental one.

Returning, Briefly

At the reunion, conversations drifted—as they always do—between memory and present reality. Some had stayed. Many have scattered to all parts of the world. Each carried a different version of the same story.

Driving back, the landscape remained unchanged. But the question lingered:

What happens to a society when its margins begin to disappear?

Not all decline is reversible. But not all loss is inevitable either.

A welcome spark of hope on my return journey came with a stop in the village of Wakkerstroom. This rural gem has been thoughtfully revived: old homes and shopfronts carefully restored, now housing curios, excellent local food, and gateways to nature. It has become a magnet for artists and for those seeking a return to the sanctuary and sense of community that rural life can still offer.

Wakkerstroom
Rural KwaZulu Natal

The condition of rural places is not just a reflection of economic trends—it is a mirror. It shows us what we prioritize, what we neglect, and ultimately, what we are willing to let go.

And perhaps the more uncomfortable question is this:

In our pursuit of better opportunities, have we mistaken movement for progress—and in doing so, lost something we do not yet know how to measure?

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S: If you enjoyed this article you might be interested in reading: Sages, Saints and Sinners Get it today on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and where all good books are sold.

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