vesterberg.se

I have recently returned from a one-week trekking in the mountains in the company of my oldest son Mattias and my dog Viggo. We visited the area west of Abisko in the very north of Sweden. It was really an adventure with many experiences of the greatness of nature. As a preparation for the trip (just for fun) I read and thought a little about survival strategies. What are the most important patterns that make people survive when they get into trouble; a plane crash, a catastrophe or when they get lost in unknown territory.

Those who survive shipwrecks, plane crashes, natural disasters and prison camps are those who are open to the changing nature of their environment, according to many psychologists. The survivors are those who notice that something changes around them and adapt accordingly.

Each one of us live with a mental model of the world, psychologists say. We see what we expect to see. We see what makes sense and what makes sense is what matches your mental model. More or less unconsciously we find reasons to exclude the information that might contradict our inner world instead of updating our view. Here comes the insidious thing. When things change around us, we don’t notice it. When the unexpected happens, we move on as usual or sit down denying the facts. We have a tendency to anticipate and predict the future based on our mental model and that puts us in trouble. We have this false sense that we are always in control.

At one point in Abisko we were a bit disoriented and were slightly on the wrong path. The landscape before us didn’t match the map as we expected. This happened at the end of the day. We had just finished a difficult passage and were hungry and tired, expecting an easy route to our next stop. We had to pause, eat some snacks (important!) and reorient, updating our mental image of our position.  We could easily have continued for miles in the wrong direction, but luckily we didn’t.

Psychologists say survivors more than others allow new information to reshape their mental model. They admit reality, accept it and work with it. They are open and curious. This rule is obvious in the nature. Those animals that adapt to changing environment survive and those who don’t become extinct. People who are rule followers don’t do as well as those who are of independent mind and spirit. Survivors question everything, sometimes annoyingly.

Trekking is a great way to learn to be a better observer. You have to look at what is around you and intelligently compare it to the map. When you walk in isolated parts of the country, losing your way can be unpleasant. This keeps you alert. You also have to look back every once in a while and memorize how your past path looks, because you might be forced to turn back.

Thankfully, we can learn to live aware and open. We ought to nourish our curiosity constantly and question what is happening. Perhaps it is a just matter of relearning, since no one is more observant and adaptive than a small child. This observant and adaptive lifestyle might save our life one day.

I appreciate and enjoy being out in nature as you might have understood by earlier posts. Umeå is a small town with about 100 000 inhabitants. I live on the outskirts of the town and I just have to cross my lawn to stroll in the woods. When I walk my dog out there, most of the times I meet no human at all. When you love nature, it is easy to dislike big cities. They seem cramped, dirty, harsh and noisy. People living there can look stressful, busy and sometimes even hostile.

Last week I was in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, for a few days. When I travelled with the subway each day I realized that I liked very much to be in a crowd. I have not always felt like this. I used to dislike or at least not enjoy crowds or queues and I hadn’t noticed this change in me until now.

Today I was out in the woods with my dog again and then I suddenly realized that I felt (almost) the same being in a crowd as being out in nature. Hmmm. How could that be possible? A city is full of houses, streets and cars. Yes, sure. But it is also full of people. Full of individuals. It dawned to me that it depends on how you look and which channel you tune into. Nature is beautiful because there is life out there. People are living and beautiful, whether they hurry or not, whether they give you attention or not and whether they smile or not.

My conclusion was: If we slow down and tune into the channel of nature and keep this channel on the dial, we will see and relate to people differently.