"I cannot believe my bush time is coming to a close for awhile! There are a few things I am looking forward to: ice water, a shower, hamburgers, talking to my family, cheese, oh... And did I mention a HOT SHOWER! ... Or just a shower in general! All at the same time, I do not feel ready to face everything that lurks in the land of technology, connections, cars, polluted air, spending money, and bustling humans everywhere. I have a feeling a few days in town will be enough and then I will make my way North into the bush once again."
If anyone actually reads this thing: Go outside. It doesn't have to be a big ordeal. Just step outside your door, with naked feet and wiggling toes on the squishy grass, dirt, rock, or whatever your yard consists of. Feel the wind, listen to the rustling of the trees, turn your face toward the sunbeams or raindrops or snowflakes, or starlight, or whatever the sky consists of at this moment in time. 5 minutes. Just 5 minutes outside. So much beauty, connection, and wonder awaits us.
Dear God Energy, how do I find my balance? The Earth's balance? The balance of a lavender desert flower blown about by the winds of the Southern Alps? The balance of a moss covered lily pad, struggling to birth new white buds amidst the hopping frogs, and tadpoles, arching their backs against the surface, struggling to learn how to swim?
How am I to tell the difference between self-confidence and vanity? Self love and narcissism? Honesty and harming feelings? Faith and science? Religion and Spirituality? Saving and giving? Respect and being taken advantage of? Love and lust? Desire and reality? The balance between work and play? Adventure and irresponsibility? Inspiration... or divine intervention... or OCD... or good luck... or Karma? Real laughter and pity?
How do I live my life as if a man in a throne exists in a place called Heaven, yet never know till I die, therefore possibly never knowing? How do I give the type of love I yearn for from others, to myself - without ever having fully experienced it from self before? If I do, fully, 100%, completely love myself, give compassion and forgiveness to self, and accept Rachel, Me, fully, exactly as I am in this moment... If I truly get there, will I be setting my expectations too high that someone could love me in the same way?
If I write for myself, hike for myself, dance, shower, laugh, drink, explore, paint, educate, buy a dog, write books, play music, learn the metric system, climb great heights in both mountains and spiritual understanding, grow my hair long, clip my fingernails, buy sundresses, travel, take photographs of just nature and I, create memories, tattoo my skin, pray to something I am trying to understand, grow a garden, watch cheesy romance films while stuffing my face with chocolate, cuddle myself in a snuggy, get my Ph.D., make friends, choose who I love, become a better sister, daughter, grandchild, gallop on horseback, buy plane tickets on a whim to places I've always wanted to go, run faster than the wind, study birds through binoculars, so silent they might just land on me, thinking perhaps I am a tree, love unconditionally, forgive, exude light and positive energy, do yoga every day...
If I do all of these things alone, do they mean anything? Are they worth it? Am I worth it? Can I build my own fire to warm my hands, and draw my own ebsom salt bath, and cry or laugh or smile every day, and massage my own aching feet, is all of this worth it, being all alone? Is it still romance if I buy myself flowers? Or pick multi-colored wildflowers where they grow in abundance? Does destiny exist? If it does, is discovering who I am worth my time, if destiny exists anyway? Is every step I walk out here helping to shift me toward a greater understanding of the Universe, even if every step is taken alone, and no one shares in my experience? Are all the lessons I am learning still "learned" if I do not record them in some way, if I simply experience them, as I talk aloud or silently to myself as I walk all. day. long... rain or shine? Does my fallible, forgetful mind, take away the significance from all I learn? Do I truly understand the difference, between "alone" and "lonely," like I think I do?
... So many questions circle round and round in my brain like a haunted children's carousel in a horror film. What types of questions are these for a 24 year old to be asking, anyway?
People often ask me silly questions. Questions such as... "What do you do all day if you stay in a hut 2 nights in a row? Or camp in the same spot twice? ... What do you do to entertain yourself when you walk so long, every day? ... DON'T YOU GET BORED?!"
BORED???...
I don't understand that word. Could you define it for me, please? Is that when we get so lazy as human beings, that we expect someone or something to entertain us? Is that when we forget that the ability to create, constantly, any time we please, exists within the recesses of each one of individual brains? That being "bored" isn't simply something that "happens," as if we have no choice.
We have every choice in the matter. "Boredom" is not non-consensual. Boredom does not/can not exist without us giving life to it. Without lighting the match, like a curious adolescent boy, dropping it into a field of grass... Blowing on the flame, just to see what will happen. And, suddenly, the boredom seems to grow wings. And she flies and she roars and she seethes through the field till enough life experience, or water, is dumped upon her, to beat her to death. Until that adolescent boy, or us as humans, turns ourselves in, admitting that we chose it. We chose: boredom. We dropped the match. We blew the wind. And then we were blinded from that point forward. I don't get "bored."
I look at nature, I sit on my ass, or stand upon tip-toes, watching birds and listening to their chirping and singing for hours on end. I stretch, I do yoga, I meditate, I chant, I cry, I laugh, I reminisce, I envision, I strengthen the muscles of my body, and the muscles of my heart, and I rest my weary soul. I eat... I drink... water or coffee or manuka tea or wine. I consider sewing the second button of my pants, and then change my mind, once again. This one I attempted to sew is enough. I'll let it unravel till I'm forced to sew it again.
AND! Crazy me... I often sit, in complete and utter silence. Watching the waves roll, the lake whistle, the mountains sing, the wind blow, the sun rise and burn and set and rise again. The rain fall, the lovers walk barefoot, hand in hand across desert and ocean and only the crazies across rocky mountain terrain. The bakers spin and slap and twirl dough. The dogs run wild and free, tongues wagging and drooling out their lopsided smiling mouths, chasing frisbees or birds or sticks into water, just soaking up their ability to run, able, wild and free.
I have spoken less in my life than perhaps... Ever. This time, though, it's not out of darkness, sadness, or depression. It's out of exhaustion, and recuperation from the expansive lengths of talking I was in the habit of conducting at home. It's out of respect for myself. For whatever might be going on in this spinning head of mien. It's silence for my cousin, who twinkles high above me, the mountains, the clouds. It's out of discovery of inner peace. Out of how much more everything makes sense when. We. Just. Listen.
It’s from the way the God Energy speaks, whispers to me, when I am. Simply. Quiet. It’s for the way I am better able to hear the birds sing, the leaves rustle, the farm animals graze, the ocean waves churn, the mountains echo reverberations of beauty and peace. I never had silence like this at home. I can’t remember the last time I watched T.V. … Oh yeah, in the hotel room I treated myself to after the rugged Arthur’s Pass in the Southern Alps… And it lasted about 5 minutes.
I suddenly feel this overwhelming sense of peace and appreciation wash over me. I feel so grateful to write by the yellow light of three barney-colored tea candles, in the wilderness of New Zealand, and then to share it with anyone who lingers to read. My experiences are what they are. My perceptions will change, sure. Depending upon the state of life I am in… But they are, nonetheless, mine. Not to be belittled, put down, or changed by myself or anyone else for that matter.
“It is what it is.” And that… Is “beautiful as.”