Someone very special to me asked me two questions:
1) Do I believe in God and 2) Have I been taking care of myself?
I believe answers to all questions are related. And I believe there are no final answers, because where do you step next after all is known? The best answers lead to more questions.
Instead of a direct answer to these questions, I will share some reflection in my development. I believe I am taking better care of my Self now than I was in the past.
I devoted some time after dropping out of college to developing myself and my passions. After a long stretch of apathy, it turns out a lot of things excite me. Like a child, I am fascinated with everything foreign, anything that I have not witnessed or experienced previously. It could be a word, a concept, a landscape, a plant. Very few things will I turn my back on if I haven't tried them before.
I have a strong interest in people and places and how landscapes and identities are created. Because the world around us is a giant story, I am interested in learning the history of the energy that people exert to mold their own individual and everyone's collective present reality. The physical world is shaped by man and natural forces and their influences on one another. When I observe the world and I don't know whether the landscape was touched by a human hand or occurred naturally, I smile.
Some folk, if they can't identify a natural perfection as caused by a human, they suggest this miracle as divine intervention. They call it God's work, or a human guided by the hand of God, others may suggest aliens with sincerity. I won't stop you, even if I could, from viewing this world as God's creation. I respect the notion of a power greater than ourselves. For me, this is Nature, the natural world. Us, homo sapiens, as a part of this existence, have evolved away from the harmony with this planet, though it is still deep seeded in us.
If you try to convince me that the world was created less than 10,000 years ago, and the sand harvested from the moon isn't billions of years old, I may look at you funny. Still I will not judge you and I won't expect you to live your life any differently than you are.
I am grateful for my past. I have had an enormous amount of good influences in my life and I have been lucky with the timing of all my experiences. People are incredible. They amaze me every day. I am grateful for this brain, this mind, this soul. I do believe in a soul. I believe it like I believe in the mycorrhizae in the soil and the mycelium in the mushrooms and Tesla's coils and quantum energy. I believe eyes offer a fraction of the truth and the soul, which contains the blueprints and memories of the oldest trees on this planet which travels as far as boundless laughter up to the ancestral starts, encompasses a much larger portion of this life. Our eyes see and the dog's smell and the birds sing and we're all so very small in wonder of it all.
I believe that to appreciate and acknowledge all this, I try to bring this gratefulness and miracle of being into my daily life. I try to smile, and laugh, and give back for what I've been given. I try to follow my heart in the direction it takes even if it is senseless and illogical. I have over time removed myself from the mold that I was being trained into becoming a part of civilization and do as the government dictates. I am not against everything the system represents, just most of it. Mainly, I am not partial to going through life blindly. Kindergarten, Elementary, High School, College, Job, Buy a House, Get Married, Have Kids, tell them to do the same without offering an alternative!
I didn't even know the mountains and the forests contained such magical streams and breaths because I never went camping until I was 18. I didn't know you could be happy because all I knew was this system and this future that was far less exciting and fulfilling than I desired. Some people may be able to achieve their fullest happiness in this system, I have found I am not one of them.
And now I have imagined this life and I am living it. And I am happy. I have worked on several farms in different climate and countries in this world. And now I am on Maui growing organic vegetable and herb starts, natives, palms, edible landscaping and more. I get to grow plants for community and school gardens throughout Maui nui. I get to breathe in this air so far removed from the downstate New York air I grew up in, and eat fresh tropical produce each day. The weather and the water is warm, the landscape is lush, green, colorful, vibrant. I get to work all over the island and I get to work with kids. I am learning every day.
I am working a lot and sleeping less lately, though with the great balance of this revolving Earth, I will return to the pattern of more play and more sleep in the future.
I've only touched on the answers to those questions that were posed. They stimulated this response instead. And in the theme of All Pursuits Worthwhile, try asking yourself these questions. What does God mean to you and are you taking care of yourself? The tasks which lay in front of you will always be there. If you are in a more positive headspace, you'll accomplish those tasks easier and feel better and more purposeful about doing them.
I'm writing this in a positive mindset. It has been an interesting year and I wouldn't have been able to write this a few weeks ago. Cheers to patience, and cheers to you. Everything is always perfect.
Aloha,
Matt
No comments:
Post a Comment