This I Believe

The World Outside

When the city lights become too bright and the pace of business leaves you out of breath, its time for the greatness of the outdoors. There is no better playground, no better place to find oneself. Nature provides and encourages the wonderful opportunity for ego death.

I venture out into the wild to lose the social conventions that have grabbed a hold of us all. As a young child, I didn’t truly appreciate nature as I spent more than half my life outside. Back then society was a novelty and the outdoors was my genuinely indigenous environment. The more I have adapted to the vices and customs of our civilized world the more discordance I feel with civilization.

In the presence of society, we develop idiosyncrasies to define ourselves as individuals. In nature, the preeminent similarities between the living provide insights into the true nature of being. Everything in nature is going through the same process of life and death, just inside different structures. The outdoors offers me a sanctuary away from the idiosyncrasies of morality and ideology. It helps bring me to the conclusion that at the deepest level we are simply consciousness.

As a human, I want to assign worth to different material objects and goals, when it is truly irrelevant. I want to say that this group of politicians is better than those, that legislation is immoral, or that those people simply live the wrong way. These urges should not be suppressed, but they must be balanced out. It is easy to define myself as against an ideology, but in the process I lose objectivity and gain an emotional high off righteousness. It is the mountains, woods, and ocean that bring me back to reality. I must thank nature, and say to you, it’s time to take a walk.