Life gets easier when you stop moving. (And not just because thighs are LITTLE MEATY CHAFE CHAMPIONS. 😵 )
Case in point: this morning I went out to my sweet rental pick-up truck, parked it underneath a canopy of sugar maples, and laid in the bed looking up at the leaves. You’d be surprised how amazing this feels, doing something you haven’t done since you were eight.
Ditto all the other things you stopped doing as an adult: eating popsicles, catching fireflies, laying in the grass, letting the world be miraculous. We stopped thinking the world was miraculous a long time ago—but that’s because we stopped living in this world. None of us live in this world: we live inside our own brains, and on computer screens, and in text messages, and through the characters on TV. We simulate our way through life. We stay indoors. We buy processed food. We don’t look people in the eye. We don’t want to be called. We definitely don’t want you to show up at our house. (ARE YOU SUICIDAL???) We don’t want to exist with you. We only want to exist in our digital world—then, it’s perfectly fine if you like our photos. But, other than that, keep your distance: we’re too busy scrolling through a highlight reel of other people’s fake existences—and their fake bouquets of boobs, too.
Well I’m just a DELIGHT today, aren’t I?!
I know. But, that’s what being in nature has been doing to me: it’s giving me a new lens. Being outdoors, staring at mountains and valleys and fields and streams, has been making me feel like a bare-faced eighteen-year-old teenager again. Everything feels new. Everything feels romantic. There’s something so refreshing about the idea of taking a 4-wheeler over a meadow, stopping to get syrup out of trees, helping your neighbor move a bureau, cutting fresh parsley from the garden.
How is this so novel??? Isn’t this what humans have been doing for centuries?
And yet, we forget.
We’ve been missing the point all along.
God, we all know I love me some technology: I’ve been prolifically online for longer than most people have had pubic hair. But, no AI can ever replicate the feeling of July. The joy of freshly-made jam. The beauty of wildflowers climbing up your walkway. And, the way it feels when there is still so much possibility in the air.
If you’ve been craving new possibility for yourself—my suggestion for you is this:
Stop searching. Stop scrolling. Stop browsing.
And go outside. Bring a notebook. Sit with nature. And ask yourself a simple question:
What do I really want to do???
A funny thing happens when you write it down on paper: you don’t lie to yourself the same way you do in your head. You don’t lie to yourself on paper. There’s something about the permanence of it all that brings out the truth: what you commit to paper might be more truthful than anything you’ve said out loud in years.
Being in nature, on the other hand, adds innocence back into the mix. Simplicity. Softness. Hope. You feel differently when you’re outside, in the grass, by some trees: younger, fresher, more open to the world. You act differently. You think differently. And you dream differently, too.
What a gift.
What a gift to be able to tap into a more youthful, rosy side of yourself.
Remember who you are in there?
Remember the kid who was thrilled to ride a bike down the street at four o’clock in the afternoon, throw a football with a friend, and make plans to take over the world?
There’s still so much you can do, my love.
Just imagine: you’ve already done all of this without being happy. Imagine what you could do if you were?
Enthusiasm is the only thing that can save us.
And…it’s the one thing you can’t ask the internet how to get.
