By Eric Weiner
We take a cable car to the top of a mountain adjacent to the famous Matterhorn. It’s still ski season, and everyone (except us) is decked out in fashionable ski attire. It’s an older crowd, their skin leathery and monied.
The most sublime aspect of this mountainous terrain, I realize as we coast upward, is the light. The hue and intensity is fluid, constantly shifting as the sun ducks in and out of the peaks. The 19th-century Italian painter Giovanni Segantini once said that people of the mountains see the sun rise and set as a golden fireball, full of life and energy, while flatlanders know only a tired and drunk sun.
Finally, we reach the peak: 12,763 feet. A sign informs us that thus “Europe’s highest mountaintop accessible by cable car.” The qualification somehow deflates our senses of adventure. It’s snowing lightly. There’s a wooden crucifix, which strikes me as odd in such a secular country. Underneath are three words: “Be more human.”
A sense of calm sneaks up on me, a feeling so unusual that, at first, I am startled by it. I don’t recognize it. But there’s no denying its presence. I am at peace.
The naturalist E.O. Wilson gave a name to this warm, fuzzy feeling I’m experiencing: biophilia. He defined it as “the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms.” Wilson argued that our connection to nature is deeply ingrained in our evolutionary past. That connection isn’t always positive. Take snakes, for instance. The chances of encountering a snake, let alone dying from a snakebite, are extraordinarily remote. Yet modern humans continue to fear snakes even more, studies have found, than car accidents or homicide or any of the dozens of other more plausible ways we might meet our demise. The fear of snakes resides deep in our primitive brain. The fear of the Long Island Expressway, while not insignificant, was added much more recently.
Conversely, the biophilia hypothesis, as Wilson calls it, also explains why we find natural settings so peaceful. It’s in our genes. That’s why, each year, more people visit zoos than attend all sporting events combined. U
From The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World. Reprinted with permission from Hachette Book Group, USA.
Category: Work
