The Essence of Things

There are some things in life we spend far too much time talking about.

We talk about happiness. We talk about love. We talk about what makes a good life. We talk about poetry, music, and wonder. We read books about them, listen to people explain them, and sometimes spend years trying to understand what they mean.

But talking about something and experiencing it are two very different things.

I have discovered that when I spend too much time trying to understand something, I am often standing outside of it.

When that happens, I like to go for a walk in the forest or through a park.

There is something about being among trees that changes the way I think. The forest doesn't hurry. It doesn't check the clock. It doesn't seem particularly interested in my schedule.

A tree doesn't look at its watch and say, "I should have grown another three feet by now."

The forest operates on a different scale.

Human time is measured in minutes, hours, birthdays and anniversaries. Forest time is measured in seasons, rings, generations and centuries. Somewhere beneath our feet, the earth is working on an even larger clock.

And suddenly my problems seem a little smaller.

Not unimportant. Just smaller.

I begin to notice things I wasn't noticing before.

A shaft of sunlight moving across the forest floor.

The sound of wind moving through branches.

A fallen tree already becoming home to insects, fungi and new growth.

A bird singing somewhere I cannot see.

Nothing is standing still.

Everything is changing.

Everything is becoming something else.

The fallen tree isn't simply dead. It is becoming part of the forest.

The leaf isn't simply falling. It is returning.

The seed isn't simply buried. It is waiting.

The forest doesn't seem troubled by impermanence. It has built its entire existence around it.

Perhaps that is one of the lessons we find hardest to learn.

We want things to last.

We want the good day to continue. We want the person we love to remain beside us. We want our children to stay young. We want our bodies to remain strong. We want a beautiful moment to remain beautiful forever.

When something wonderful happens, we want to put our arms around it.

Better yet, we want to put it in a bottle.

Label it.

Store it somewhere safe.

But life doesn't work that way.

The moment we try to hold on to something, it has already begun to change.

And perhaps that isn't a tragedy.

Perhaps it is the point.

When I walk through the forest, I sometimes have what I can only describe as a shift in perspective.

I am no longer simply walking through a collection of trees.

I am part of something.

The boundary between me and the forest becomes a little less certain.

I breathe in what the trees have helped create.

The trees breathe in what I have breathed out.

We are participating in the same exchange.

For a moment, the distinction between "me" and "everything else" becomes wonderfully blurry.

That is when wonder arrives.

Not because I have finally figured everything out.

Quite the opposite.

It arrives when I realize I haven't.

I have completely missed the point.

And somehow, in admitting that, I begin to understand it.

Maybe that is true of music.

Maybe it is true of poetry.

Maybe it is true of love.

Maybe it is even true of happiness.

We spend so much time trying to define these things that we sometimes forget to experience them.

Perhaps the essence of life isn't something we can capture.

Perhaps it is something we enter.

Something we notice.

Something we participate in.

Something we briefly understand before it changes again.

The forest doesn't give me an answer.

It gives me something better.

It gives me another way of seeing.

And sometimes that is enough.

Because we are not standing outside the great mystery of life trying to solve it.

We are already inside it.

We always have been.