As I freefall through my days, struggling to create a routine where there is none, I return to a set of ideas that live in the quiet parts of my mind, ideas which come out to my attention now and again.
The bare essence of them is that we are creatures meant to live by the light of sun and moon, to curl up in comradely huddles at night, and to sit and laugh with our fellows in the brightness of day. We should shiver in the rain and cold, sweat in the shade in the heat, feel the warming soil of spring beneath our feet, and the chill hard rocks and soft forest litter and mud gooshing up between our toes.
In our efforts to remove ourselves from the hardships of a life at the mercy of the world, we have created a life in which we can pretend the world does not exist, a life that human beings are as new to as it is to the world. We can sit in bright, sunlit days that last for more than 24 hours, more than seven days a week; we can live in a twilight land of cubicle caves and half-light radiance, days where the light is thin and simple compared of the full richness of a true sunlit day. We can rise and sleep according to circadian rhythms that have become detached from the regulation of dark and light, or we can force our bodies to wake and rise with loud noises and sleep and fall with drugs and stubborn will. We eat not when we are hungry, or when food appears after time of famine, but on rigid schedules or in an endless orgy of gorging that does not rise or fall with any season (except, perhaps, the "holiday" season). We can spend our lives in lonely, untouched isolation, despite being surrounded by myriads of fellow beings, growing as sad and twisted as wire-mama monkeys, or shoehorn all our needs into the small vessels of a single companion, two desperately protected children, and a parent or two; we even buy companionship, or seek its likenesses in screen and story.
This is not to say that all these wonders are bad, especially enjoyed in small doses, supplementing the heavy reality of the world that is. But, used to excess, they are bad for us. Worse, they blind us to the world that sustains us, the networks and connections that still tug at our bodies every minute of our lives and even after our deaths. We can pretend that this empty-calorie version of existence is as satisfying as a varied and complex diet, that live can be lived out of soda cans and television sets and cubicles lit with fluorescents, but while we slowly drift into physical and psychic malnutrition, the world that is rolls on. We ignore it, and are surprised when water floods our homes. We forget it, and are stunned to realize that whole species have disappeared while we were eating our vitamin-fortified breakfasts. We pretend it does not exist, and wonder why we are so tired and cross when we smack our alarm clocks for the fourth or fifth time in the morning. We grow fat, and lazy, and selfish and dull, and turn to magazines and tv shows and diet gurus to remind us how human bodies and minds can work. By denying the world, we deny ourselves, and it sickens us.
For a day or two, sleep when the sun goes down, and wake when the sun comes up. Step outside barefoot to get the mail and feel the sun and air upon your face. Open a window at work, bring in a basket of sticks and feathers and stones to perch upon the plastic of your monitor, have a fish in a bowl to watch you even as you watch it. Grow a few plants from seeds. Walk outside when there's a full moon and stand in the cold bright light, and see how well you can see. Look at the weeds in the cracks of the sidewalk. Follow an ant back to the hole in the wall that let it in. Carry fruit in your pocket and eat it when your stomach growls. Touch someone on the arm, and let them touch you in return.
Acknowledge your connections to the world, as you teach your mind to recognize and reattach to them.
By starting small, perhaps we can heal the wound we've been making as we try to cut ourselves free from the world. Regrowth happens one cell at a time, after all.
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