From & To Sathish #7 - Page 95

https://www.self.com/story/types-of-friends-making-plans?utm_medium=email&utm_source=ten_tabs&utm_campaign=&position=8&category=fascinating_stories&scheduled_corpus_item_id=bdb590fb-d5ef-4bf3-8a7a-540c79209770&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.self.com%2Fstory%2Ftypes-of-friends-making-plans

There Are 4 Types of Friends When It Comes to Making Plans—Which One Are You?

Turns out, every group has the Captain, Bee, Golden Retriever, and Fruit Fly.

Window seat Chapter 1

They had been seeing each other for more than a year now at the Saidapet bus stop, but from a distance. The area that is called Saidapet was created in the 18th century by the Nawab of Carnatic Sayyid Khan. "Saidapet" translates to "town of the Saiyids" (from Arabic Saiyid - lord, and Tamil pettai - town).

They travelled in the same bus and even alighted from it at the same common destination. Parry's corner. Parry’s Corner in Chennai, is named after Thomas Parry, a Welsh merchant who established the mercantile firm Parry & Co in 1788.

From the very first glance she had taken of him, as he stood tall, back straight, dressed in a perfectly creased black trousers, spotless white shirt, and a black coat resting on his left arm, she knew he was an advocate. Since, he got off at Parry's corner, that automatically meant that he practiced in the high court or maybe was a junior to a senior advocate who practiced there.

The very first moment he had seen her, dressed in well ironed cotton sarees, with her handbag and the small bulge in its side that screamed " Lemon rice or curd rice or Tamarin rice " he knew that she was working as a secretary in one of the countless offices that existed quietly in the many by lanes of Parry's corner like the countless stars that wink their lights in the night sky.

As always the bus groaned to a stop with the brakes making squealing noises that had some of the more elderly brahmin people whispering, " Aiyo sagunam sariyilla ( bad omen ) and holding back from getting into the bus.

The moment he got into the bus, he knew that it was a mistake for most of the seats reserved for men were already taken by men dressed in white shirts and white dhotis with their borders revealing which party they belonged to.

He had boarded the bus as always because she had and thinking to himself, ' Okay, even if I am going to stand until Parry's, it will be worth it for she is there just a few seats away and dressed in her and his favourite parrot green coloured saree.

Running his eyes over the two dozen men dressed in their politics, he mused to himself, ' all the men in this bus and in the other buses behind them are heading to the high court to show support for their leader who is been implicated in a corruption case, for which judgement is going to be delivered later today. But its not going to go anywhere. It has taken nearly five years for the judge to make up his mind about the verdict in this case. But sadly it will not amount to much, for they will take it to the Supreme court where it will languish for five or ten years, in which time, the 75 year old man in the center of the corruption scandal will either be dead or nearly dead.'

Then hearing someone calling out to him, ' Sir, advocate sir ' and realising that it was the woman, doing so, for he knew her voice better than his own, turned to her and seeing her wave to him, hesitated for a second and made his way to her seat.

She looked at him and said, ' Vacanta irukku ' and with just two words she told him what he wanted to know and sitting down, take extra care not to touch her, he thanked her.

After debating for a few painful seconds, he glanced at her and introduced himself. ' Good morning. My name is Raman.'

The way her eyes widened, flared open in recognition made him wonder is she recognised him from somewhere. Some past connection in some other life and then she introduced herself.

' My name is Jeevitha. But, I like it when I am called as " Jeeva."

The govt bus made its way through Anna Salai aka Mount Road with its engine, suspension groaning and moaning and with is exhaust huffing and puffing black smoke and each time the driver changed gears, the engine screeched loudly sending scary shivers through the passengers bodies, importantly bowels and one young man yelled loudly, ' This is what happens if you change gears without using the clutch.'

The driver, a wise and well versed to the smart observations of the public who traveled in his vehicle yelled back " This bus is as old as your grandfather. Like his non-existent teeth the clutch in this bus is missing most of its own teeth and that is why it is slipping like how your grandparents drip and drool while eating or drinking. Why don't you write a complaint to the govt or to a newspaper or better, do a reel for Insta or TikTok, and maybe that will bring this bus some new parts and me some deserved relief.

Smiling, Raman observed to Jeeva, ' The bus driver would have made for an excellent lawyer for he made his point very clearly, presented the evidence properly and without muddling the facts or confusing the judge.'

' Since you have opened the door with your opinion, can I take this moment to ask you why you don't travel to the court in a car or a two-wheeler. It will save you so much time and you can do it on your own terms.'

' A valid question. I could do that. But I don't, and the reason for that is a bad accident that I was involved in a few years ago. It left me with a broken shoulder bone and fractured femur in my right leg. After that, my parents made me promise that I would never sit on a bike again. I do own a car. An old Hyundai Santro. But, the evening traffic can sometimes be so bad that I lost my patience in driving a car. I do sometimes take it out. Mostly on Sundays or holidays.'

Turning away, he thought, ' Beautiful Jeeva, I would not trade anything for the chance to be with you or at least travel on the same bus with you.'

Window seat Chapter 2

Then again, after a few minutes of silence, it was Jeeva who broke it by asking him if he stayed with his parents.

' No. I live alone. My parents live in Trichy which is my native place. My dad just retired from State Electricity board and my mum is a Govt school teacher who has a few more years to go for her own retirement. I am staying in a one bedroom house which is situated in a large compound owned by my father's close friend who also live there in his own six bedroom mansion. They also happen to be distantly related to our family. I guess you can call my place a outhouse that you see in films. Quiet and private. I even have a separate gate for myself to come and go as I please. '

Seeing his hesitation, and realising that he was not only shy but too polite to pry into her affairs, she volunteered information about herself.

' I live with my parents and a younger sister. My dad retired as an engineer from the railways and my mum works at home.'

' Works from home? You mean she is in the IT industry?'

The moment he asked that question, Jeeva began chuckling that she tried to stifle by covering her mouth, but seemingly unable to do so, she looked at Raman and began laughing with her mouth open leaving him to stare at her totally besotted with his own mouth open in open admiration.

He thought the laughter that sprang out from her shapely lips was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard in his life and then, her laughter died leaving behind an echo of a smile.

' Sorry, Raman. So rude of me to be laughing like that. But I could not help myself from laughing after imagining my mother behind a laptop. Knowing her, she would have laughed even more louder than me.'

Raman who had until then stayed diligently behind the invisible Lakshman Rekha that exists until trust and faith erase it, unintentionally crossed it by confessing to her that he loved the sounds of her laughter.

Then realising his mistake, he began to apologise but with a shake of her head, Jeeva told him that it was not necessary.

' Please, you just complimented me wholeheartedly. Don't take it back by apologising for it ' and lowered her head realising that an invisible line did exist between them, smiled and looked at him.

' I am sorry if I misled you by saying my mother works at home. The reason is I find the word " Housewife " insulting and demeaning to what a woman, more importantly what a mother does in the house. She cooks, cleans, sweeps, washes, goes to the shop to buy vegetables and provisions and so much more. I think a woman who does all that is actually the very foundation of a family. Without her there is no family or home. I think the right word to describe a woman is " All rounder " or better still " Creator ". Honestly, coming to think of it, my mother would have had a great career in any line of work if she had chosen to take it up.'

' Wow! Now that is indeed a great way to describe a woman ' and saying that, Raman smiling wistfully told her that those were the exact words that his father had said.

' I mean not as eloquently as you did but the man did not stop with just words and began helping out from the day after his retirement. That does not mean he did not help while he was working, but took on more duties upon himself. My mother tried to her best to dissuade him from doing the housework, but stopped after he threatened to literally go on a hunger strike.'

' Raman, your mother is really a lucky person to have a husband like your father' and saying that looked away from him and in a sad voice told him that the situation was slightly different in her home.

' Different! Why is that, Jeeva?'

' Because even though my dad wants to help around the house, he is not able to. He used to but the arthritis has more or less crippled him, and he is not able to walk much. Still, he sits at the table and cuts vegetables for my mother even though the arthritis has reached his shoulder joints. But the brave soul he is, he just smiles and carries on.'

Turning to Raman, ' Many years ago, he told me that there all of us experience several kinds of pain in our lives. But, some are worth bearing, carrying and suffering.

Then without realising what she was doing, Jeeva touching her forehead, ' Appa said that and stuck the crown of a lady's finger on my forehead.'

' Jeeva, can I state something that is obvious and common between us? I mean we both share something..'

She looked at him with her curiosity aroused, ' Please do.'

' I think we both have been blessed with the best parents heaven could send down to us. Do you concur?'

' Yes your honor. I concur completely.'

The use of the legal word set them both off and they lost themselves in their laughter and in their own world.

The bubble of privacy that they were in was broken by the conductor's loud announcement " Parry's corner. Please get down. Final stop. '

Then all the passengers turned hearing a young man dressed in formal clothes scream ' Parry's corner. What about Anna square?'

The conductor smiled and screamed, ' sir, we passed that stop twenty minutes ago.'

' My interview. I am going to be late for my interview ' the young man ran out of the bus screaming in panic and all of them heard him screaming ' Auto. hey auto' and then they heard his screams reach an earsplitting decibels, ' what! 200 rs to go from here to Anna Square? But it is just 3 to 4 kms from here. If I start running I can reach it in 30 minutes.'

The conductor whistling loudly, ' Anybody else who are late for their interviews...'

But both his sarcasm and whistles were now drowned in the loud yells of the party members who had travelled in the bus and in other buses behind them as they yelled, ' Release our leader. Release him right now.'

They were the last ones to get down from the bus and doing so, both stood for a moment looking at each other not knowing what to say or how to say goodbye. They stood looking at each other realising that they had been travelling towards each other and today had somehow finally reached each other.

Putting out his hand, Raman said, ' Miss Jeeva. Its been a privilege. I would like to thank you for a lovely bus journey. I hope..

' Yes. I hope so too. Take care, Mr. Raman and I wish you a great day ' and pointing to the hundreds of party people, ' please, I hope you never get involved in cases involving politics and politicians. That is a one way ticket to the gutter.'

Saying bye she headed towards Armenian street while he headed directly into the red high court that was just opposite the road.

The bus conductor Chandran looked at driver Thangaraasu " what do you think about the new couple? you think they will fall in love or will remain apart like the windows on both sides of our bus?"

Thangaraasu thought for a second " I don't know about love Chandra but i sure hope that they remain good friends."

Chandran laughing " poda, friendsa.I want them to fall in love, get married and live happily ever after."

Thangaraasu laughing " Tell me Chandru, in all our years of service, how many couples, lovers have come and gone through this bus of ours,and how many of those have successfully ended in a permanent relationship."

Chandran nodding " I know,not many for most are like the rain that falls during summer. Fleeting and far between. And then either the girl or the boy will change their routes or simply disappear. But I have a good feeling about these two for both look like solid and safe souls."

Thangaraasu " Chandra, even if they are good people and do fall in love and want to get married, the real problem will arise when both confront their families with their love and marriage proposal. Even real and true love can be broken, corrupted by parents and their needs and sometimes their needs are genuine and then there is no proper and right answer to all those questions. God only knows."

Then after they had parked their bus in the nearby terminus, they opened their tiffin boxes and Chandran howled like a man who had stepped on a sharp rusty nail and lamented, ' Aiyo, the same fu.king tomato rice again. This is the third time this week that she has given me this. Is it not enough that my wife looks like a tomato? Does she have to hammer in that day in and day out?'

He looked at Thangarasu who squealed like a dog whose tail had been stepped on by someone heavy and howled, ' F.ck, it is tamarind rice again. It is a miracle that I have not yet turned into a tamarind pod.'

Shaking their heads and sharing their burden of their food, they hurriedly ate their breakfast for soon it would be time to head back to Saidapet terminus.

Window seat Chapter 3

Jeeva worked in a company called K.K. Enterprises named after its owner Mr. K.K. Agarwal. She had been working there for more than eight years now. As she made her way towards her office building, Jeeva recollected the circumstances that had led her to answer the ad she had seen in a newspaper, calling for young graduates to attend an interview for the post of a secretary.

It was the middle of May, and she had just finished appearing for her final year BSc economics exams and she and her colleagues were discussing how they were going have a great time in Kodaikanal and that too for two weeks.

Even though, she and her batchmates belonged to a middle-class or lower middle-class family, which meant little or no money for expenses, the dream of spending two weeks in Kodai and that too with free boarding and lodging was made possible only because of Bharat, their rich friend, who also happened to be her boyfriend.

If Jeeva had known that Bharat was not just rich but beyond that, she most probably would not have developed feelings for him. It had nothing to do with stuff like low self esteem or inferiority complex, but prudence that rich people were of a different mindset from the middle class and classes lower than that.

But, then again fate works in strange, mysterious and complicated ways. A word that was coined thousands of years, ago by men whose hairstyles and beard styles are being followed by 21st century's so called trendy folk.

Those saints and sages coined the word " Karma " an concept referring to the universal principle of cause and effect, where an individual's intentional actions, thoughts, words, and deeds shape their future experiences. Simply put Action means Reaction.

My late grandma explained this in an even more simpler manner that a simpleton like me could understand.

You shove a stick in a sleeping dogs arse. Then that dog will take a chunk of your arse. Maybe a piece of bone in case you fall in that Bony arse category.

So, fate conspired for some unknown reason and brought Jeeva and Bharat together.

As they all sat sipping masala tea and sharing masala vadais, that was so oily, that it was guaranteed to bless them with smooth motions for the next thousand years, Bharat leaning into Jeeva and nibbling her ear, ' Baby, we are going to be travelling all the way in the backseat. Is that okay with you?'

' Okay B. But, I need to talk to my parents about it and get their okay first. I am sure they are not going to object. '

All the female batchmates roared loudly, ' Jeeva, we are not going without you. So, we will all come as one and beg permission from your parents.'

After thanking all of them for their love and support, she promised Bharat that she would talk to her mother after dinner.

It was nearly 11.30 pm when she slowly stepped out of her bedroom that she shared with Suja aka Sujatha her younger sister who herself had just finished appearing for her 12th board exams.

Finding the tiny hall empty and dark, she turned towards her parents bedroom and saw that the lights were on and they were still awake.

' That's weird, for knowing my mum, she will usually be up watching TV, until the tv itself says, ' Goodnight Kamakshi. Time to sleep to go to bed now.'

Jeeva had planned on talking to her mother first but not finding her in the hall, decided that she would talk to them both and get it done with.

Then hearing her mother raising her voice, Jeeva not knowing what to do, did what most of us do before making a move which is to listen, eavesdrop.

If hearing her mother, raising her voice against her dad was not shocking enough, hearing her dad crying like a little child broke her into pieces.

Stepping closer, Jeeva stood hearing a sad tale that is heard by most children belonging to families where only the father works and worse when he has just retired. The sad tale is titled, Making ends meet " which means earning just enough income to pay for basic living expenses (housing, food, bills) without having any extra money. It describes a situation of financial, often frugal, living where income barely covers essential costs.

Peeping in, she saw her mother hugging her father and consoling him, and she heard her tell him that he could use all the jewellery she had to fund their younger daughter Sujatha's dreams of becoming a doctor.

' Mani, Jeeva has finished her degree. Maybe we can ask her to take up a job which will go a long way in helping our situation.'

' No, Kamakshi. No. She has dreams of doing her MBA and getting a job in one of the high profile multinational companies and I am sure she will do that. She is smart, brilliant and much more than Suja.'

' But, Mani, where is the money da? You were the one who told me last week that a two year MBA course in private colleges will cost anywhere between 15 to 25 lakhs. Where will we go for that kind of money? As it is we are barely making ends meet with your pension? Then there is your arthritis that is getting... and stopping looked at him sadly.

Jeeva heard her father's words loud and clear, ' Kamakshi, I care a f.ck about my arthritis or about me. In the end it is only pain. We will stop buying all those expensive medicine that is costing us nearly 15,000 a month. Then we will take out a loan on our house which should take care of both the children's futures. They are the reason why I am still alive. If I can manage to somehow secure their futures, then it would have been all this pain and trouble we have lived through.'

Some are born great. Some become great when gigantic burdens are placed on their shoulders and are asked to make sacrifices. With a smile, they rise up to the challenge by knowingly taking on the weight and go about doing their duty. In the end, life is a duty, a responsibility and should be done without anyone asking you to do it. For, in that very word duty, lies your purpose and priority. There is one word that defines duty, purpose and priority and that is the word " Love".

“In the midst of happiness or despair

in sorrow or in joy

in pleasure or in pain:

Do what is right and you will be at peace.”

I drive Uber. Mostly nights.

Last week, around 11 PM, I picked up an old man. Fragile. Polite. The kind of quiet that feels heavy.

He got in and said,

“I need you to take me to five places tonight. I’ll pay you $500. Cash. But you can’t ask why until we’re done.”

He handed me five addresses.

---

**First stop:** a house in the suburbs.

He didn’t get out. Just stared at it. Ten minutes. Shoulders shaking. Silent tears.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Next one.”

---

**Second stop:** an elementary school. Dark. Empty.

He walked to the playground. Sat on a swing. Let it move gently in the night air. Twenty minutes.

When he came back, he smiled through wet eyes.

“I taught here. Forty-three years. Best part of my life.”

---

**Third stop:** a small diner.

He ordered coffee. Didn’t drink it. Just sat in a booth, looking around like he was watching ghosts.

“My wife and I had our first date here. 1967.”

---

**Fourth stop:** the cemetery.

He stood at a grave, speaking words meant only for one person. Thirty minutes.

When he returned, his voice was thinner.

“My wife. Three years today.”

---

**Fifth stop:** the hospital.

“Now I’ll tell you why,” he said.

“I have stage four cancer. Weeks left. Maybe days. Tonight I wanted to see my whole life one last time… before I can’t anymore.”

And just like that, the air in my car changed.

“The house — where I raised my kids.

The school — where I found purpose.

The diner — where I fell in love.

The cemetery — where I said goodbye.

And here…” he looked up at the hospital doors,

“...where I’m checking in. Hospice floor. I’m not going home.”

He handed me the $500.

“Thank you for driving me through my life. You’re the last stranger who’ll ever be kind to me. I wanted it to be gentle. You made it gentle.”

I tried to refuse. He pressed it into my hand.

“I have no one to leave it to. My kids don’t speak to me. No friends left. You gave me three hours of kindness. That’s worth more than money.”

He picked up his small suitcase.

“What’s your name?”

“Marcus.”

He nodded.

“Thank you, Marcus. For being the last good thing.”

And he walked inside.

---

I sat in my car and sobbed. For an hour.

The next day, I went back.

Room 412.

He smiled when he saw me.

“Marcus. You came back.”

“I couldn’t let that be the end.”

For two weeks, I visited every day. Brought coffee. Read him the news. Sometimes we just sat in silence. He told me about his wife. His students. His regrets. The phone calls that stopped coming.

“I thought I’d die invisible,” he said once.

“But you saw me.”

On a Tuesday at 3:17 AM, I was holding his hand when he took his last breath.

His final words:

“Tell people… look at strangers. Really look. Everyone’s dying. Some faster than others. Be kind on the way. You were kind. You saved my last days.”

The monitor went flat.

He didn’t die alone.

---

Six people came to his funeral.

Me. Three nurses. A lawyer. One former student.

Eighty-one years of life.

Forty-three years of teaching.

Fifty-two years of loving one woman.

Six people.

I spoke.

“He paid me $500 to drive him through his memories. But what he gave me was priceless. Every stranger is someone’s whole world. Every person you pass is carrying a lifetime of love, regret, loss, and hope. Kindness isn’t extra. It’s everything.”

I still keep that $500 in my glove box. Never spent a dollar.

It reminds me:

Every ride could be someone’s last.

Every goodbye might be final.

Every stranger is one gentle moment away from feeling seen.

So now I drive differently.

I ask questions.

I listen longer.

I look people in the eyes.

Because somewhere tonight, someone is taking their last ride.

Be the driver who makes it gentle.

**Quiet moments. Loud truths.**

https://psyche.co/ideas/why-the-search-for-proof-cant-be-separated-from-faith

Why the search for proof can’t be separated from faith

by Adam Kucharski, author of Proof: The Art and Science of Certainty

Rather than being an enemy of empiricism, belief in what can’t be known is part of how we gain knowledge, even now

In an uncertain world, the search for truth can pull us in two very different directions. One is a path of logic and reason, paved with evidence and experiments. The other is a route of faith, built on belief and trust.

At least, that is the common perception. Many of us study faith and reason separately at school, then are encouraged to keep them apart in our professional lives. But the two paths cross more than we might expect. Take the current Pope Leo XIV, who has a degree in mathematics. On the face of it, maths might seem like a safe haven from faith. Statements are true or false. Theorems are proven or disproven. A fact today is a fact forever.

Yet mathematics and religion share a long and tangled history. Many influential mathematicians were driven by faith as much as by logical conviction. Isaac Newton viewed God as the active force sustaining natural laws, while Georg Cantor believed his revolutionary ideas about infinity were divine revelations. As the statistician Karl Pearson observed in 1926: ‘the post-Newtonian English mathematicians were more influenced by Newton’s theology than by his mathematics …’

Faith and reason have long coexisted, with an intangible belief in God shaping tangible mathematical discoveries. Today, a non-spiritual form of faith continues to shape mathematical ideas. From climate science to AI, approaches to proof no longer rely on pure, simple logic. Instead, trust plays an increasingly important role.

Much of this transition is down to the complexity of modern scientific problems, and the opacity of the methods that researchers use to solve them. Contrast this with the fundamental principles we learn at school – like Pythagoras’s theorem – which can generally be proven with one or two pages of logical arguments.

We are no longer in an era where breakthroughs can be demonstrated with a few handwritten equations. Even in mathematics, some proofs sprawl into hundreds, even thousands of pages. Take the proof of the so-called ‘geometric Langlands conjecture’, announced in 2024. In short, this says that it is always possible to translate problems about symmetries into problems about shapes. If true, the conjecture would be a step towards a grand unified theory, linking seemingly different areas of mathematics. But is the conjecture truly proven? The recently announced proof runs to almost 1,000 pages. It will take years to undergo thorough peer review and appear in an academic journal.

As the length of typical mathematical proofs started to grow dramatically in the 1970s and ’80s, so did concerns about the trust required to accept them. When proofs run to thousands of pages, and only a handful of people have the expertise to check them, how confident can we be that no detail has been missed? ‘What should one do with such theorems, if one has to use them?’ the mathematician Jean-Pierre Serre asked in 1985. ‘Accept them on faith? Probably. But it is not a very comfortable situation.’

Not everyone believed the proof initially. Maybe the computer had made an error somewhere?

It is not only the lengths of proofs that require trust. It is also the methods that are now used to show that things are true. In 1976, the mathematicians Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken made history when they announced the first computer-aided proof. Their discovery meant that the mathematical community had to accept a major theorem that they couldn’t verify by hand.

The pair had tackled the so-called ‘four colour theorem’, which states that if you want to fill in a map so that no two bordering countries are the same colour, you only ever need four colours to do this. There were too many possible map configurations to crunch through by hand. So, they used a computer to get over the finish line.

Not everyone believed the proof initially. Maybe the computer had made an error somewhere? Suddenly, mathematicians no longer had full intellectual control. They had to put their trust in a machine. When Haken’s son, a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, gave a lecture on his father’s proof in 1977, he recalled the audience reaction:

The older listeners asked, ‘How can you believe a proof that makes such heavy use of a computer?’ The younger listeners asked, ‘How can you believe a proof that depends on the accuracy of 400 pages of hand verification of detail?’

It showed that the handwritten certainty of the old guard had become a source of fallibility for the new generation.

For a while, there had been hope that science could escape faith entirely. In the 19th century, scientists had begun to question the role of God in shaping the world. One of them was Francis Galton, who had become sceptical about the impact of prayer. ‘Most people have some general belief in the objective efficacy of prayer,’ he noted in 1872, ‘but none seem willing to admit its action in those special cases of which they have scientific cognizance.’ In other words, where science was now shining light, there was no need to turn to God to explain the darkness.

Galton even performed a statistical analysis that suggested prayer was ineffective. Comparing the average lifespan of different professions, he found that royalty – despite supposedly benefitting from proclamations like ‘God save the Queen’ – were outlived by lawyers, doctors and traders.

New paradigms would often have gaps and inconsistencies at first, as well as facing opposition

Yet researchers still found themselves needing to believe in things without solid proof. One such belief was in the value of research itself. Ronald Fisher, who pioneered the statistical design of experiments in the early 20th century, argued that because scientific knowledge can have unpredictable future benefits, it was not possible to place a value on a future discovery. As he put it in 1955: ‘scientific research is not geared to maximise the profits of any particular organisation, but is rather an attempt to improve public knowledge undertaken as an act of faith …’

In the 1960s, the philosopher Thomas Kuhn introduced the notion of ‘paradigm shifts’, whereby one dominant scientific idea is replaced by another. For example, one such shift occurred in the mid-19th century, when scientists began to pin disease on microscopic pathogens, rather than the accepted ‘miasma theory’ that illness came from bad smells in the air. Kuhn pointed out that new paradigms would often have gaps and inconsistencies at first, as well as facing staunch opposition – and extensive evidence – from supporters of the existing paradigm. In the case of germ theory, crude microscopes made it hard to convincingly demonstrate the existence of these new germs.

A bold new idea like germ theory could take off only because there were people at the start who pushed forward against these challenges. ‘The man who embraces a new paradigm at an early stage must often do so in defiance of the evidence provided by problem-solving,’ Kuhn suggested in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). ‘He must, that is, have faith that the new paradigm will succeed with the many large problems that confront it, knowing only that the older paradigm has failed with a few. A decision of that kind can only be made on faith.’

One of the most recent examples of a paradigm shift has been in the field of AI. Historically, computer-generated knowledge had come from following clear logic and rules, known as ‘symbolic reasoning’. It was this instruction-based approach that had enabled Appel and Haken to prove the four-colour theorem with a computer. Symbolic approaches have been widely used in other areas of science too. For instance, they allow climate scientists to simulate complex atmospheric dynamics on supercomputers. Although it’s not possible to check the results with pen and paper, it is possible to write down the rules that the computer is following to generate the outputs.

In the 2010s, an alternative method rose to prominence. Rather than following hand-coded rules to complete a task, neural networks could learn from huge amounts of data, adjusting millions – or even billions – of connections between artificial ‘neurons’ until the resulting network could make accurate predictions. Neural networks had been around for decades, but it had taken huge datasets and vast computing power for the method to repay the faith that a minority of advocates had placed in them. Just as Kuhn had outlined, early adopters had persisted with neural networks, despite limited success in practice, thanks to their belief in the promise of a better future.

The search for truth has always required belief, beyond the limits of reason

In the past decade, neural networks have beaten humans at complex games like Go and poker, powered self-driving cars, and even helped researchers win a Nobel prize for predicting the structure of proteins. An idea long in the wilderness has finally made it into the mainstream. And in the process, modern AI is once again testing our faith in technology.

Unlike symbolic reasoning, neural networks are generally a ‘black box’. Users can make sense of the inputs and outputs, but not the complexity of the artificial neurons in between. Even though neural networks can be trained to do useful things – like predict protein structures or drive cars – it is difficult to say exactly how they are managing to do it. This can require a shift in mindset; most scientists grew up wanting to understand how the world works, but they are now grappling with a technology that can deliver human-like performance without human-like explanations. Even if AI becomes very good at a task, there is still the chance that a surprise is lurking.

The game of Go was supposedly mastered by superhuman AI almost a decade ago. But in 2023, the AI researcher Tony Wang and his colleagues put this conclusion to the test. They found that even a state-of-the-art system could be tricked into making absurd mistakes that would cost it the game. This suggests that superhuman performance in some situations isn’t enough to guarantee that AI won’t fail unpredictably at other times. Just like humans, even the best AI can get distracted or misled by a distorted view of the world. Worse, these weaknesses may be unavoidable, no matter how good neural networks get in future. ‘Just because you see your AI system behaving well in scenarios A, B, C, D, this does not necessarily imply that it will behave well in scenario E,’ Wang told me shortly after publishing the analysis. ‘There’s an act of faith you have to take.’

From Newtonian mathematics to modern machine learning, the search for truth has always required more than logic. It has required belief, beyond the limits of reason and available evidence. Belief that new ideas will be vindicated, that near-uncheckable proofs will stand, and that scientific knowledge will help societies. It’s tempting to view faith and reason as two distinct paths, in two different directions. But science has long relied on them both, with faith spurring researchers to explore the unknown, and reason helping them understand what they find when they get there.

Adam Kucharski is professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where he focuses on making better use of data to tackle health threats. He is the author of The Rules of Contagion (2020) and Proof: The Uncertain Science of Certainty (2025).

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Scientists Discovered the Oldest Clothing in Human History

Two sewn-together animal hides constituted vintage fashion from the Ice Age.

Window seat Chapter 4

A few years ago, I was busy shooting for a very emotional and melodramatic scene in the serial " Baakiyalakshmi ". The scene involved me ( Gopi ) fighting with my ex-wife over custody of our daughter. The scene involved Gopi begging his daughter Iniya to come and live with him. Even though the scene was well written, I found something lacking in it. The lines were just about okay but not spectacular.

I asked the director who smiled confidently and said, ' Sir, we are number one in the ratings. Don't worry too much about it. Once the episode with this scene is telecast, people will forget it ' and pausing for a second, ' Sir, why ask when we all know you will add something to it. Just do it. Do your magic.'

My ex-wife Baakiya goes on and on about motherhood and then my turn came and falling to my knees before my daughter ( Who happens to be short ), I tell her with tears in my eyes, ' Everybody only talks about how great a mother is, and how much sacrifices she makes, beginning with carrying a child in her womb for ten months. But, what about the father who carries the child in his heart until his death and works hard until his retirement.'

You see them, standing in Bus stops, riding bikes, driving cars and even today, you can still see them on bicycles. The same men, fathers who carried tiffin boxes, do the same now as they make their way to their places of work.

Jeeva was nearly 21 years old and according to Indian law, had been an adult from the time she turned 18 years of age. When we google the word " Adult " it tells you that it mean a person or an animal that is fully grown. Okay, if you do as I do, and ask it for other meanings by typing " Adult synonyms" it gives you words such as, mature, seasoned, senior, experienced etc.

But what does growing up or being called an adult really mean in daily life. Okay, you can buy booze and cigarettes. You can vote, get married. You can watch Adult rated movies in the theater.

Jokes aside, growing up really means taking responsibility for our actions and words. It means that one has to learn to depend on themselves and develop a 360 degree radar vision. It means that we are not children anymore and that our parents are getting older, weaker and there is even a chance one of them might just kick the proverbial bucket. That becomes a tragedy and a death sentence to the whole family if it is the father, the breadwinner who succumbs to death.

In the annals of history, events are divided by two eras. BC and AD. Before Christ and Anno Domini which means in the year of the Lord. This system is maintained for consistency and convenience, though many academic, scientific, and secular contexts now favor the more neutral BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era).

As far as Jeeva was concerned, her history would be divided from that day she heard her sick father cry like little child in the arms of her mother. She stood frozen, broken and confused after having heard her father, her hero, the man of their family cry his heart out at not being able to do more.

She stood shattered hearing him tell her mother that he was going to stop buying medicine for his arthritis riddled joints.

The Jeeva who had tip-toed to her parents room to inform them about her trip to kodai with her friends was gone. It was a different Jeeva that laying her head on the pillow proceeded to stare at the ceiling fan and allowed it to spin her back through time and back into childhood memories.

Her father had just returned from work, and when the kutty ten year old Jeeva ran to greet him, he had given her the parcel containing hot bajjis and bondas.

' Bajjis for you and Bondas for Suja ' and seeing her still standing there, ' Jeevama. Ennamma. Enna venum.'

' Appa, I have a question for you. But, I am not sure if I should ask it or not. ' she had told him.

' Jeeva. I am your father. But, I am more of a friend and a mother to both of you. So feel free to ask any question of me.'

Pointing to his head, ' Why is your hair so white? Why do you look so old and tired all the time? My classmates make fun of me saying that you are not my father but my grandfather. I know it is not so. But, I want to know why you look so old?'

Closing her eyes, Jeeva opening her video collection of memories, recollected how her fathers face had saddened for a second and then, covering it with his usual brave smile, he had answered her question.

' Jeevama. It is a long story. But, the moral of that story is that all of us are not born equal. Sometimes, god decides to bowl you out each time you decide to do better and bat better by bowling the most unplayable googlies that the famous Shane Warne bowls.

Placing his hand on her head, ' Don't worry about what people say about me or us. People will talk, and keep talking no matter what you do. Be it Good or bad. Just ignore them.'

Window seat Chapter 5

Jeeva had always been an inquisitive girl. But, her inquisitiveness didn't stop at her just wondering about life and people. She made it a point to boldly ask questions and sadly, most of them were always put to her parents.

One day, during dinner, she asked her mother what love was all about and what it meant to her. Seeing her mother beginning to panic, Jeeva had calmed her down saying that the topic had nothing to do with her and pointing to both her parents, ' The question concerns you.'

Manigandan, her father feeling no panic that was obviously threatening to erupt in the volcano that was his wife, asked Jeeva what had driven her to ask them such a question.

Suja who was sitting next to Jeeva, patted her elbow and asked, ' Akka, are you going to eat that chappati? ' prompting her to exclaim, ' You have sent down five chappatis into that boiler room of your tummy, and now you are raiding my plate ' and saying that, took it and placing it in her little sister's plate, warned her saying that if she ate like this, then things would be bad for her when she grew up.

Chewing on her chappati in a nonchalant manner, Suja told Jeeva that she didn't believe in stuff like love and marriage.

' I am going to study hard, work hard and eat hard and enjoy my life ' and saying that, burped so loudly that the birds in the trees outside their house, that had retired for the night took off screaming in fear.

' Suja, you pig ' Jeeva yelled and suja with a smile patting her chest, burped again and declaring, ' Better out than in I say as my favourite hero Shrek says ' walked away from the table leaving them alone.

When Kamakshi looked at both her husband and her daughter for understanding, Mani told her, ' You remember what I told you the first time we met. I am repeating it again. I don't know much about English films for I have not seen even one in my life. Matter of fact, the number of Tamil films that I have seen will stop after the number twenty.'

Pouncing on his words, Jeeva cornered him and her mother by asking what love meant to both of them.

' The reason I am asking this question, is because it is obvious how much both of you care for each other. Sometimes, I wonder if you love each other more than you do your children.'

' Jeevama, where is all this coming from? ' Manigandan asked warily and before he could follow it up with a few more queries, Kamakshi raising her hand stopped him and at the same time conveyed to him that she would answer it for both of them.

' Yes. We love each other more than we love you and your little sister. This man sitting here is not only my husband, friend, companion but also my first child. So, what's your problem about it? '

Glaring angrily at her mother, ' The problem is I don't have a problem with that at all. I was just curious as to why you both share such a beautiful bond that I don't see in most of the parents that come to pick their children up in school.'

' No, Jeeva. You are wrong in saying that. You are with us all the time, and so are privy to everything that goes on in our home. But, those parents you see, God only knows what problems they are facing in their lives. It is wrong to judge people without knowing anything about them or their situations ' and saying that getting up, stood and with a smile told her, ' No good comes out of comparing yourself with others. Each and every one are fighting their own battles ' and saying that Mani taking his plate went into the kitchen leaving mother and daughter looking at each other.

' Amma, honestly, did I ask or say anything wrong? If I have any doubts about something, or anything, who else can I talk too, other than both of you.'

' Jeeva, honestly, sometimes I find it very difficult to understand what's going on in that head of yours ' then as if remembering something, ' Are you in love with someone?'

' Whaat! ' Jeeva screamed in both anger and shock, and getting up angrily, ' Just because I am a big girl and its been two years since I came of age, does not mean that my thoughts are wandering in that direction.'

Realising her mistake, Kamakshi tried calming her daughter down by saying that a couple of day ago, she had heard their next door neighbours thrashing their daughter after catching her reading a love letter given to her by a senior in school.

' Amma, lot of boys have tried giving me love letters and right from my 5th std. But, I tore them all up and throwing in their faces, warned them that I would inform the teachers about it. So, no need for you to worry about me and all that stuff. In case I do find someone interesting, I will talk to you and dad about it. Okay.'

' Okay. Now go and wash your hands and come back and I will try and answer as best as I can the question that you asked me and your dad.'

Meanwhile, Mani whose arthritis had begun unleashing itself, went off to the bedroom to lie down and rest his aching limbs.

Then after Jeeva returned to rejoin her mother at the table, Kamakshi placing a finger on her lips, used the same finger to point to the front portion of the house and said, ' We will talk there ' and mother and daughter walked together to have an adult conversation.

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Society Needs A Doctor’s Prescription For Nature

Long treated as a backdrop to human life, the trees, babbling streams and rolling hills of the natural world could actually help repair society’s fraying social fabric.

By Oliver Milman

While in graduate school and mulling relationship problems, Marc Berman did something that felt faintly ludicrous: He walked up to an oak tree and started talking to it.

The grandeur of this oak, in Ann Arbor’s Nichols Arboretum, seized Berman. It was strikingly large and isolated from the rest. “I’m a scientist, so I don’t know if I really believe in this stuff, but it had this aura about it,” he recalled. “There was something very powerful about that tree.”

Berman thought about previous awe-inspiring interactions in nature, such as gazing at gargantuan sequoias, and felt a sense of calm.

He hadn’t lost his mind. The Sylvan encounter, in 2008, came at a portentous time. He was working on landmark research at the University of Michigan that outlined the psychological benefits of being close to nature.

In a study for this research, people took a test challenging their attention and working memory and then went for a stroll through a park. Afterward, upon taking the test again, they improved their scores by an average of nearly 20%, much more than another group who had walked amid the grinding roar of downtown. Even being shown pictures of nature scenes improved participants’ mental functions, Berman and his colleagues found, compared to images of cityscapes.

These findings support the common wisdom that interacting with nature has restorative benefits. A growing body of scientific studies has confirmed this, revealing how hiking through landscapes or even gazing at them through a window can provide benefits such as lower blood pressure, quickened healing times and improved moods.

Lately, though, scientists have been looking beyond individual health outcomes and investigating how nature’s powers impact us collectively.

Trees, babbling streams and rolling hills can make us feel more connected to others and engender a sense of shared society, too. Exposure to nature also increases our “self-transcendence,” researchers in China found last year, making us feel more of a bond to others and realize that we are part of a mosaic of life that is larger than just ourselves.

Berman, now a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, has observed similar effects. In another study, he found that while walking through a nature conservatory, people thought less about themselves and more about their environment and others, and while in a shopping mall, they felt more personal, impulsive urges.

Nature not only revives us, it seems to revive our spirit of common cause. This raises compelling possibilities in our fractured, often lonely age of inanity and roiling anger erupting from the screens to which we find ourselves perennially glued. The trouble is that our access to nature is unequal, politically fraught and steadily shrinking. Could small interventions to reintegrate nature into our cities, schools, healthcare and daily life be the salvation we need?

Nature’s Healing Power

Nature as therapy isn’t a new concept. Roman and Greek aristocrats withdrew to their countryside villas to clear their minds, and the restorative functions of the outdoors were obvious to thinkers of the time. Hippocrates, the ancient Greek “father of medicine,” is believed to have called nature “the best physician.”

Many centuries later, while designing Central Park, the architect Frederick Law Olmsted recognized the power of nature to pull together the increasingly stratified classes of New York City. “We need the calming influence of green spaces to cleanse our souls and rejuvenate our spirits,” he said.

Over in Japan, meanwhile, people practice shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing, immersing themselves in nature to practice mindfulness and improve health and wellbeing while breaking from technology and busy city life. In Norway and other Nordic countries, the concept of Friluftsliv, which translates as “open-air life,” was popularized in the 19th century by the playwright Henrik Ibsen and embraces the idea that it is better for your mind and soul to be in nature, regardless of the weather.

But it’s only in the last 50 years or so that we have applied the rigor of the scientific method to such claims and beliefs, which had long seemed frivolous or overly humanistic to some. In 1984, a foundational study found that post-surgical patients at a suburban Pennsylvanian hospital whose rooms had a view of trees rather than a brick wall had shorter hospital stays, required less pain medication and received fewer negative nurse evaluations.

“Scientists are looking beyond individual health outcomes and investigating how nature’s powers impact us collectively.”

This finding, which spurred many hospitals to reorient their surroundings, was followed by the scientific validation of a rush of other longstanding hunches about the benefits of nature. Aspects of nature have now been linked, variously, to improvements in cognitive function and self-control behaviors among children and a reduction in the risk of many psychiatric problems later in life, such as depression, substance abuse and eating disorders.

Exposure to nature can lower our blood pressure, slash the risk of diabetes, improve our mental health and treat ADHD in a way that’s similar to a dose of Ritalin. Likewise, earthly sounds, like crickets chirping and crashing waves, can help us perform better in cognitive tests compared to the cacophony of urban life, such as traffic.

Closeness to the natural world can also help address yawning inequalities that exist among us. Having just 10 more decent-sized trees on a city block, on average, correlated to a 1% increase in how healthy residents reported they felt — a boost equivalent to making them about $10,000 wealthier or seven years younger, noted researchers in 2015. Add, on average, a single extra tree on top of this and participants actually were healthier than those with fewer trees — with a small average drop in a cluster of conditions including stroke, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.

“It does seem a bit magical,” Berman, one of the authors of the 2015 research, admitted. “I’m always wary of things that seem too good to be true, but there just is a lot of evidence that’s showing this.”

Environmental Neuroscience

Berman’s work in nature was shaped by his desire to understand human behavior. He grew up as a shy, awkward kid in suburban Detroit who was haunted by his grandparents’ experiences during the Holocaust and considered the Nazis to be intrinsically evil for their crimes. But during his foray into academia he was struck by the famous Stanley Milgram obedience experiment at Yale in the early 1960s, in which a majority of participants delivered large electric shocks to others, usually actors, when told to do so, despite the yelps and pleas of those hooked up to the current.

Humans, Berman thought, are not the tabula rasa theorized by English philosopher John Locke, but we are also not hardwired, preordained automatons. Our surroundings matter.

“It made me think that if you can design environmental conditions to make people evil, maybe you can design environmental conditions to make people good, and that stuck with me,” said Berman, who went on to coin the term “environmental neuroscience” as shorthand for the study of this field.

Importantly, the benefits of nature do not appear to depend on how much we actually enjoy being outdoors. Some people would find a bracing winter forest walk fun; to others it would be a dreary trudge.

But as long as you aren’t freezing or feeling unsafe in some way, the repair to your fatigued attention through what Berman calls the “soft fascination” of nature, as compared to the “hard fascination” of ostensibly relaxing but mentally taxing tasks such as watching TV, will happily occur anyway. Nature tickles our attention gently — it doesn’t overstimulate us like much of modernity does.

“I kind of went into it thinking we’d find, well, if people are exposed to nature that it just makes them happier,” Berman said. “It can make us happy, but it doesn’t have to make us happy to get the benefits, and I think that’s where human intuition is wrong. The cognitive benefits, these attention and memory benefits, are not driven by mood; they’re driven by something else about nature.”

What it is about nature, precisely, that delivers these benefits is less clear. The “biophilia” hypothesis argues that because our evolutionary history required proximity to forests, grasslands and water for our survival, we retain a need for close contact with nature, and this has left us cosmically ill at ease with the straight lines and uniformity of urbanization.

For some people, the benefits of nature could stem from the exercise they get when taking a stroll, or it could simply be the refreshing change of scenery from the monotony of the indoors. Or perhaps the visual appeal of curved shapes and fractals in nature are soothing. When Kate Schertz, one of Berman’s students at the time, showed pictures of nature scenes to study participants, they reported feeling more spiritual and philosophical, even when the images were scrambled to the extent that participants couldn’t tell what they were beyond their mere outlines.

“Our access to nature is unequal, politically fraught and steadily shrinking.”

Or it could be a combination of factors. Regardless of the cause, the benefits of nature have become evident enough that doctors in countries including the U.K., Finland and Canada have started to prescribe exposure to nature to patients to improve their mental and physical health, with 20 minutes spent in a park or gardening cited as the desirable dose. In Canada, you can be given a script for free access to the country’s national parks.

Many of us may feel we don’t have the time or inclination to poke at ant nests and jump across felled trunks, but the key is “moments, not minutes,” according to Holli-Anne Passmore, an associate professor at the Concordia University of Edmonton who has studied connections to nature. “It’s about noticing nature, even if you’re walking to your car or standing by a tree at the bus stop,” she said.

Read Noema in print.

Someone walking through a park, head down with their earphones in, will have a different, less beneficial experience compared to someone who spends the same amount of time soaking in their milieu. “You don’t have to sit there and meditate; it’s just about being aware that the wind is on your face, the sun is there, there are different sounds,” said Passmore.

“I think it’s obvious that the environmental catastrophes that we’re in the middle of started from a disconnection to nature, from this human hubris that we are somehow other than nature, that we are somehow better than nature,” she added. “People forget we’re just another kind of animal.”

Divorced From Nature

Even if nature can improve our individual health, can it really help knit us back together as a society? Such a prospect appears distant given our current, atomized existence. Where previous generations fretted over TV shows or movies monopolizing chunks of our days, smartphones now consume our daily lives, overwhelming us with a relentless, dizzying stream of alerts, emails, emojis and short-form videos.

The average adult now spends almost seven hours a day, on average, gazing at the internet. Around 40% of children have a tablet by the age of 2 and almost a quarter of children have a cellphone by the time they turn 8. If you’re 18 to 29 years old, more than six in 10 of your peers are almost constantly online.

Young people are increasingly indoors, a situation that has raised concern that they are suffering from what the American journalist and author Richard Louv has called “Nature-Deficit Disorder.”

Screens, in many ways, do the opposite of nature: They can erode our attention spans and raise our anxiety levels. But they aren’t the only thing contributing to the sense of separation that permeates modern, fretful life. In the post-war U.S., car-centric suburbs were designed with a dearth of shared communal spaces, parents became wary of letting their children outdoors due to a heightened fear of crime or mishap, and we started to engage less in civic rituals. Our age of fragmentation began long before TikTok.

“Children’s freedom and autonomy to roam went away first, and then screens filled that time in,” said Louise Chawla, an author and professor emerita of environmental design at the University of Colorado Boulder. “That loss of freedom of movement was the beginning of the decline in young people’s mental health. Screens just assisted it.”

As we’ve become increasingly alienated from each other — more than half of American adults report signs of feeling lonely, with the U.S. surgeon general declaring a loneliness epidemic in 2023 — we’ve also divorced ourselves from the nature that sustains us. People, especially the young, spend less time outdoors than they once did and as a result we are losing not only the mental and physical benefits of nature but also artistic and cultural touchstones.

Researchers recently analyzed 5 million English language books and found something remarkable: Nature words such as “river,” “mosses” and “blossom” have been disappearing from our literature at a rapid rate. Between 1800 and 2019, there was a more than 60% decline in these terms, the study found.

“Our relationship with nature is failing,” said Miles Richardson, a professor of human factors and nature connectedness at the University of Derby who led the research. “We are now in an attention economy; there’s a battle for attention and nature is the element that doesn’t have an advertising budget,” he added. “We’ve been schooled out of the wonder of nature; we’ve been primed to scroll through our phones and look for wonder there instead.”

“Could small interventions to reintegrate nature into our cities, schools, healthcare and daily life be the salvation we need?”

Beyond the impact of technology, political shifts have deepened our division from nature. In the U.S., even the modest funding for environmental programs is under attack.

Budget cuts by Donald Trump’s administration have targeted many programs that link people with nature, such as the Americorps agency, which offers opportunities to work in environmental stewardship, and a nationwide urban tree planting initiative that was halted by the U.S. Forest Service because, puzzlingly, it “no longer aligns with agency priorities regarding diversity, equity and inclusion.”

National parks, too, have been ensnared in efforts to shrink federal spending. The National Park Service has lost nearly a quarter of its full-time staff since the start of Trump’s second term, according to internal data, with remaining employees now having to juggle several different roles just to keep parks open. Some programs have suffered as they have been pushed down the priority list, such as visitor education by park rangers.

These and many other political changes are further eroding our already limited access to nature. Around 100 million Americans, including 28 million children, do not have a park or other green space to walk to within 10 minutes of their home, according to the nonprofit Trust for Public Land.

This lack of greenery is particularly pronounced in lower income communities of color, which disproportionately have fewer trees and other leafy plants, winnowing away their chance to benefit from the soothing effects of nature and making urban neighborhoods much hotter when heatwaves arrive.

A Nature Revolution

In a world seemingly short on empathy, nature offers a crucial and largely non-political pathway toward restitching our fraying societal fabric. After all, what other single, low-cost intervention has been shown to improve individual health while also chipping away at some of the most balefully stubborn ailments of society, such as loneliness and violent crime?

How to actually achieve this sort of breakthrough is a more complex question, however — one that may have to involve reshaping our towns and cities to become more walkable; bringing more green space into urban cores, like Singapore has famously done; and embedding the knowledge and tactile experience of nature into school curriculums.

Jackie Ostfeld, founder of Outdoors Alliance for Kids (or OAK), has worked in several states to bring children into nature, including fifth and sixth graders in Bakersfield, California. Many had never spent any significant time outdoors beyond their neighborhood and, despite living near the Tehachapi Mountains, had never seen these peaks, nor the snow that accumulates on them.

“Screens have become a convenient babysitter, but there are a lot of factors to this problem,” said Ostfeld. “There are more people growing up in places where parents don’t feel it’s safe to run around and be free, parents are working several jobs and don’t have time to take kids outdoors, school budgets are slashed over and over so there’s less money for school trips.”

Awareness of this issue has increased somewhat in recent years, sparking worthwhile responses in several cities. In Los Angeles, there are proposals to have shuttles bring urban residents to nature spaces, while Detroit has a program that allows youths, many who have never been outside the city, to camp and take trips kayaking and hiking.

There is evidence that children’s learning is enhanced by being in nature, that their cortisol levels drop, that they become more inquisitive and in touch with the world around them. Perhaps the next step after pandemic-era remote schooling at home could be remote schooling from the woods, Ostfeld suggested. “Covid created an opportunity for outdoor learning that didn’t get harnessed in a way many of us would’ve liked,” she said. “We just went right back inside when it was over.”

The growing evidence of nature’s benefits should be pressed home to politicians and other decision makers, Berman feels, as an avenue to ameliorate societal problems such as crime and obesity.

“This is a time to invest more in nature and nature access, and getting people more contact with nature, and being more creative,” he said.

That creativity could involve reimagining our buildings, according to Berman. “You could imagine a city of the future where the skyscrapers almost look like giant trees, that have vegetation growing down the walls of them, or even have indoor conservatories where there’s nature indoors,” he said.

“In a world seemingly short on empathy, nature offers a crucial and largely non-political pathway toward restitching our fraying societal fabric.”

For children, lengthy contact with the outdoors should be embedded as standard practice during school days, while for adults, the working week could be reoriented, Berman argues. An eight-hour school day could include two hours of breaks in nature and workplaces could encourage a one-hour period spent in nature to help boost productivity, for example.

Much like how we went through an industrial revolution and then an information revolution, we may one day go through a “nature revolution,” Berman believes. However, the path there may involve drier, more piecemeal methods.

Some politicians will be drawn to how increased engagement with nature could push down crime rates, others to the potential economic savings to the healthcare system. Some school districts may start to rethink recesses and field trips, while a new generation of city planners could design more walkable green spaces rather than the status quo of highways and strip malls many Americans are used to.

Each step, even if it strays from purism by getting people to view nature through virtual reality goggles, could help, Berman believes. “I think I can pound on the table and say, ‘We need to do all these things,’ but I still think there’s still a little bit more we need to do to really quantify these benefits,” he said.

“We can be in the nature revolution, which is that we recognize how important this is. I think a lot of that involves having more nature access, and maybe in some places that might be hard. But we can be creative.”