The more I reflect on this last year that has come to a close, the more I realize time is meaningless to me. Seconds turn into minutes, which turn into hours, and eventually turn into added up years. I feel better today at age forty-one, than I had ever felt in my twenties. Likewise, I look much younger than I ever looked in my later twenties. A number or another birth year does not make me look or feel older, so time my friends is irrelevant to me. Some might rationalize that I am out of my mind for not finding value in a global view on experienced moments. I would simply argue that I am a living being that is able to gage my time by the ever changing seasons, the food that proves time and time again to grow during certain seasons naturally, the falling of the leaves, or the clouds of pollen that circulate the air come Spring. Has society put expectation on time? I will continue to feel youthful and hopefully look it as well. I will cherish my moments in solitude and with those that I cherish dearly. I will not allow others expectations of their perceived notion of what a second, minute, hour, or a year means to me.
As I walk through the beautiful scenery of greens, browns, water blues, cloud whites, I find myself in the current moment. I hear my breath, which in return places a value on my inhalation. I escort the slowly wiggling motion of the slugs off the paved path to a soil rich safety zone. I scoop up the hesitant earthworms and centipedes. I stop to appreciate the shuffling of the squirrels looking for the last fallen acorns under the brownish colored leaves. I look up at the brightly radiant sun as I feel its warmth on my cold cheeks. My ears perk up with every variation of chirping I let guide me as I continue forward. You see my friends time is lost in nature. The animals know the warmth of the sun and the coolness of the moon. To them what is a second, a minute, an hour, or even an entire year. Is their an appreciation for the day they were given life? Humans seem to be the only ones in nature that have this notion of time aside from a sunrise and a sunset.
My unpopular views are that we should be gravitating like a strong magnet to the cycles of the animals and bugs around us. Instead we mimic daylight with LED daylight bulbs expecting to get safety, security, maybe even health from the comfort of what we call our home. We must have running water, electricity, sewer, etc. Often looked at as basic needs, but are they really; I have to question? The closer I get to nature, the more I realize these are not the basic needs we should be after. A simple walk in nature puts my body into a tranquil euphoria. Each step makes its own rhythmic pulse throughout my body. I am elated to be alive and moving forward in this man made circled path of pavement. My mind soon goes back to my youthful mind wanting to color the negative space considered outside of the lines. To me the lines were never a restriction of color, but instead a piece of a bigger story. Maybe the girl holding the balloons was the start of a much bigger story I could fill in with my creative artistic touch of a crayon in that negative space. All space is meant to be filled whether it be filled with air, dirt, people, etc. So why the restrictive thinking on dark lines in a coloring book; again, I have to ask? I am starting to see my man made circle of pavement in the same light as the coloring book. Why are we being restricted to these two miles to walk upon? As much as I do not know about this life, the smaller my space seems when I realize my energy is restricted.
This last year I successfully turned on and off disease with testing animal products and sugars on my own body. Animal products leave me a bit fuller than I would ever like to be with added inflammation. That absolute dead still life feeling of despair definitely came to my door with the consumption of sugar. I think we can all agree some man made products should have been better thought out before being made if made at all. So why is it so hard for us to grasp this concept when it comes to the consumption of food? God made sugarcane not processed white genetically modified chemical powder called, "Sugar." God made honey in the spring and maple syrup when the trees get cold enough, typically in the winter. These are suppose to be seasonal items not year long luxuries. I am worried there are far too few of the "Me's" in the world that understand this concept of the rhythm of life. What truly does a second, a minute, an hour, a year even mean if we are stuck confined to the lines drawn out for us not by nature, but rather by mankind? This is not how nature intended us to be and make no mistake in the fact that we too are nature.
I will close with this. As lonely as my concepts can leave me at times with relationships, I am somehow fulfilled in a deeper way than I have ever been before. A good conversation with a nearby tree is the feeling of talking with God. I do not feel lonely at all in these moments. Watching life as it comes and goes reminds me of the seasons changing bringing new life as we watch the old life feed back the earth. This Rythmatic beat of God's perfectly tuned orchestra playing. Can you hear it? The wind, the water, the bugs, the squirrels, the life all around us that knows no time. I wish I could unknow man made time as well. Wake up with the sun. Sleep with the moon. Embrace what simply has never been able to escape us, nature. At the core of it all, we truly all are part of one existence.
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