A Part of Wildness

So much of our modern civilization objectifies the world around us. The result is we feel APART from it, rather than a PART of it. We develop whole ideologies dividing the world into US and THEM. We spend inordinate amounts of time, energy and money attempting to tame the wild and deliver the savage. We become strangers to the world around us. Insects become pests and birds become a nuisance and wildflowers become weeds.

What drives this need to control our world? Why do we mow and trim and prune and not take the time to smell and touch and taste? Why does a perfectly manicured lawn seem to epitomize beauty? Have we become slaves to an idealized view of what we and the world should look like?

This blindness robs us of real joy. Everything less than perfection is portrayed as unsatisfying. But we are not fools, we know down deep that there is no perfection here on earth. This produces a great deal of anxiety in our lives. When this perfection becomes our goal we become willing to sacrifice true peace and joy in the pursuit of something manufactured. Manufactured by the promise that these certain products will make you look younger, more attractive, live longer and of course have a better looking lawn.

Participating in this objectifying only perpetrates a culture of people who see the world as things and objects. If we see ourselves as separate or apart from nature then wilderness has very little meaning. Wilderness becomes something wild, untamed and therefore dangerous.

I don’t appreciate an English Garden because it represents what nature should look like. I appreciate the amount of labor that went into constructing it, but I don’t let it blind me to the true beauty of real wildness.

Wildness includes decay and rot! It isn’t all beautiful flowers and luscious fruit. There is injury and death involved, a passing away of life to create life anew. It is intimately bound to the seasons and their transformative power. The peace of new fallen snow gives way to the resurrection of life in spring which gives way to the verdant fields of summer and which then gives way to the autumn harvest. Our lives follow such a similar cycle.

Look around and see your place as part of this wildness. Resist the notion that you are not part of it. Express your wildness with truth and real beauty. Don’t let the manufactured world tame you! Sameness does not bring oneness. Oneness comes from fully participating as a part of creation!

It is true. There is beauty in the earth that has nothing to do with anyones hand. The earth creates, sustains, builds, rebuilds,...nature can be beautiful, violent, mysterious and more. Nature always provides. Man is at a loss without the help of nature. Someday, we may all make a fatal mistake...a warlike decision that will end us all, but earth will not only endure but survive. A thunderstorm can be both beautiful and yet violent and deadly. That is the way of things. Thanx grayeagle for your true words. Hugs, J. ^j^