Sitting in the woods today I tried to find a few moments to just ‘be’. There was no TV, no music, no deep conversation to fuel my distraction from what I like to refer to as the passing of the universe. To understand the importance of this I have to take you back a few weeks to the moment I woke up in the middle of the night contemplating the totality of oblivion. It frightened me so deeply that I failed to sleep for several hours after that. I was as much terrified of the death part of it (inability to create and record new moments) as the great expanse of the universe that we are all a part of.
The other day I brought up the word entropy and talked about the fact that nothing every remains the same and how everything is moving, changing, and hurtling through time and space at incomprehensible speeds. I feel afraid to even consider the fullness of that. Not being still and not being silent allows us to ignore the largeness of life and disconnect from these great universal forces that are, in a real way, too much for us to soak up. I’m a huge culprit of that. The first thing I should do in the morning is breathe in the day. I should take a moment to listen to the world and think about my relationship to it and my purpose for being. Instead I snap on Sportscenter, or NFL Network or (Gods forgive…) CNN. I shut out that inner voice telling me I need to interface with the natural world.
As my body and mind ages I am becoming more aware of my unhealthy tendencies and especially aware of the impact they have on my personal -spiritual being (that force that drives you forward to want to achieve more). Just sitting in the quiet and learning to be is a way to connect to that part, and to heal that and through that healing to becoming the best possible me.