We never finished the essay on nature, (hopefully that wasn't just me), so I decided to sit around outside for awhile and see what happened. I think the most obvious lesson I learned from this (sitting around on the beach for forty-five minutes, that is) was that I have an easily distracted mind. Like, really. Typical thought patterns went like this: "Yep, there's some waves… They're really wavy. I wonder how much I have to know about waves for the chem test… do I know anything about waves? At all..? The frig is amplitude..?" And so on. But during the time that I really was out there communing with nature, I felt actually pretty serene. It was cool. I felt like I really, really wanted to paint the waves, but remembered I can't paint, so I just settled on trying to fix the memory of the scene in my mind as best as I could. That was the point that I was able to really start focusing on the naturey aspect of the exercise. I dunno, it just felt very right and fitting to be sitting there on the beach looking at the water, like putting a book on a bookshelf that just fills the gap and completes the shelf. Truth be told, I'd planned to only be there for thirty minutes, but I found myself enjoying just being there so much that I stayed awhile longer (then I had to go to be picked up, sadly). The way I felt is nearly indescribable, but it was really nice. Staring transfixed at the waves and stuff allowed me to just stop thinking at all about things that worried me. For those twenty minutes or so that I really was focused, my entire mind consisted of the sand was sitting on and the waves. True, in truth I was in the La Jolla, an offshoot of one of the largest and busiest cities in the world, sitting on a beach surrounded by tourists, but as I got into it my surroundings seemed to become simpler than that, and I along with them. I have always believed that the best thing in the world would be to be ignorant enough to not know whether you had things bad or good, such that you could just go with the flow and assume that that was the good life, and this experiment was sort of drawing near to that. As my frame of reference slipped away, I found myself simply not worrying anymore about the chem test or any of the stressful things in my life. Essentially, it was a very relaxing experience that I think could not be replicated in the absence of nature, and, unlike the ill-fated friendship experiment, it is something that I plan to do again.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Post #4
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2 comments:
I would say that it is not completely our fault that we are so distant from nature so often. Instead of living in it we are constantly distracted and forget that we are really a part of nature. These distractions as you described, the tourists and city et cetera, get in the way of experiencing nature. It is almost sad that we have to have a homework assignment to get us to go out in nature, we technically should be living in it, after all we are animals. I shared the sam experience in spending a large amount of time ( or a longer time than I would have liked) trying to tune out the unnatural surroundings in order to see and here nature as purely as I was capable.
Ah yes, traveling is indeed a fool's paradise.... but yes, it is quite difficult to connect with something we as people have become so unfamiliarized with. The simplest, and most basic aspect to our existence intrigues, and entrances us to points that we can't even comprehend. Getting away from the material things, and our stresses and worries, to simply sit and gaze at the beauty of nature is a very majestic and serene feeling... unfortunately, we cannot stay by nature forever, there is more to life than nature, and balance is key
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