Making a big change in your life can be unsettling. For some of us, it can even be so disorienting that it triggers a depression. I hope and trust that will not happen to me, this time.
If you decide for a big change wisely, in a well-considered way, it can also have huge advantages. To name just two: (1) it can strengthen your feeling of being free and in control of your own life again; and (2) it can be a great occasion to reflect, to take a brief pause reassessing both your past and your plans for the future.
During the coming days I will be moving, bit-by-bit, to a new home not far from where I live now. It’s a primitive old wooden cabin – complete with wood stove – hidden between trees and shrubs. Romantic. In some respects, back-to-basics. And hard to find, too! But of course I do not intend to become a weird and completely isolated hermit like Ted Kaczynski did in his Montana cabin (see footnote). In fact, driving to the nearest town will take me less than ten minutes.
Yesterday I sat for the first time in my new yard. I took this photo:
Although we’re still waiting for really fine spring weather, the first mosquitoes and flies and honeybees were already buzzing around in this overgrown garden. While quietly sitting there, I suddenly had a strange experience: I felt like one of those buzzing insects. A living being just like them: part of the same natural order, belonging. I felt a direct connection with everything around me.
No doubt in the next weeks, after moving in, I’ll become more realistic again, taking some measures against nature encroaching too much on me. If I don’t want my place to get overgrown completely I’ll have to do some frequent clipping and weeding; I’ll install some anti-mosquito curtains for my door and windows; and I plan to find myself a fierce cat that hopefully will keep out mice and rats.
Still, that moment of “feeling one with the bees” was too valuable to forget. I think the essence of that feeling was the awareness that nature as a whole is so much bigger and more permanent than us small living beings. The awareness that we all, whether we are a honeybee or a human being, are both a natural part of that whole picture, and a temporary part of it.
We humans last for longer than those mosquitoes; but the trees will outlast us. And a hundred years from now the world will still be green (I hope) but the very same picture will be filled with other shrubs, fresh flowers, other bees, other rabbits, hares and birds, and other people. Hills and fields will probably look very much the same, and maybe your present house will still stand, but someone else will be living in it.
What this means is that we, just like that honeybee, should take full advantage of the brief span of time that is allotted to us. And enjoy it, as intensely and actively as we can.
Life is short: all the more reason to get a grip on it. Don’t let depression steal your limited, precious time.
Enough philosophy for today –
Now for a practical point!
According to my internet provider, it will take them at least until May 25th before they can get me a working online connection at my new place.
Of course I’ll try to find some temporary solutions, but combined with the actual chores of moving, this means that for the next two weeks I may not be able to update this site with the normal frequency.
I hope that by June 1st, everything here at StayOnTop will be back to normal again.
• footnote: The notorious anarchist “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski gave up his university job and moved to a remote cabin in the wilderness, cutting all ties with society, living alone in complete isolation without electricity or even a water tap. And more important, without seeing anyone.
From there, between 1978-1995 he mailed his bomb packages to people whom he believed represented all the evils of modern industrial civilization.
You must be mad to bomb people, but also mad to opt for that kind of extreme isolation. I’m convinced that in turn, this self-chosen isolation made him even more crazy than he already was.
June 18, 1924 –
Dear Henk, Its a great joy to reflect on your experience with the honeybees for a while (and your beatifull picture). Still after reading your commentary it resonates in me on a level of consiousness that does not restrict itself to the fysical limitations of the body and the environment where your story is referring to. Somehow the beauty and the significance of being one with nature transcends all bounderies and touches my soul to an extent where infinity zooms in, beyond time and space, where (my) existence seems to be full in itself, by itself. Is your story of the honeybees innocently telling us that the outer world is just a reflection of our underlying inner beauty that gets enlivened by this experience? Are the honeybees reflecting the beauty of our inner being? Are they touching our deepest essence that is united with all and everyone, which makes ourselves very happy. Can we call this deeper inner feeling ‘Love’, that has no beginning and no end, because it enlivens the level of the (cosmic) Soul (in us)?
Enough philosophy for today. Thanks for sharing and have a good time in the change your life is taking now. Have a good move.
Hi Jaap,
Thanks for commenting! I’m a bit slow in reacting, but you know I’m busy moving.
I think I understand more or less what you’re meaning, but I’m afraid I cannot fully share it. You’re too mystical for me, if I may say so.
What I meant was quite simply that I felt like a living being, and as such a part of nature, just like all other beings such as the bees and flies surrounding me, and just as short-lived as them. Meaning that we, as a temporary part of that bigger whole, should try to make the most of that short temporary life.
I am willing to respect your view, but I myself cannot believe in some cosmic higher level that transcends the body: on the contrary, I think that it is impossible to make a clear distinction between body and mind. And to me, this fundamental unity of body and mind means that evidently, right at the moment when our body dies, our mind (our brain activity) will die too. Yes, as long as life will keep existing on Planet Earth, other bodies with other minds will take our place. But in my view, this means there is no such thing as being endless yourself. Why should we view ourselves as bigger and more important than the temporary beings that we actually are? Newborn babies have to experience and learn everything again from the ground up: so at best, you can say there are a kind of cycles that endlessly keep repeating themselves. We can get in touch with the life that surrounds us momentarily (like I did when sitting in my new garden) but we cannot really get in touch with any forms of life that may exist a thousand years from now.
Also (again: if I may say so) when you suggest that the honeybees are reflecting the beauty of our inner being, that causes me trouble. To be honest, I’m not even convinced that we have some kind of inner being that is inherently beautiful. I’d rather say we (in our body-and-mind-unity) are very complicated beings: so complicated that sometimes, we’ve trouble understanding ourselves. Sometimes we may be beautiful, some other times probably not.
I myself think that the quest for some transcendental, eternal Soul has something to do with fear: with a desperate refusal to accept the finality of death. Sure: life goes on after we die, but what goes on is the life of others: not our own. In my opinion, the only way to find peace is to simply accept that your own life (like all individual lives) is final. We human beings are not supernatural but just an ordinary part of nature, just like horses, cats and honeybees, and as natural beings we’re just one little short-lived episode in the same natural life-and-death cycle that we briefly share with all other living beings.
So according to me, being one with nature also means we’ll unevitably die at some point – body, mind, soul and all. We can only leave a modest legacy for future generations in the form of a few left-behind traces: some of the things that we made or wrote down during our brief lifetime, and that will still exist after we ourselves have gone forever (see my post “Leaving a Footprint” at http://stayontop.org/2012/02/01/leaving-a-footprint/).
Well, this is certainly more than enough philosophy…
Hi Henk,
Thanks for your reply. I do hope your move was/is succesfull and that you are enjoying yourself at your new home. Regarding your commentary: From my point of view a lake can be active, but completely silent, also. Our mind can have all kinds of thoughts, but it can be completely in peace with itself too, without any trace of activity. This so called ‘self-awareness’, where the subject, the process of knowing and the known (the object = subject) are naturally one, is an inner experience, that transcends the information and activity of the brain, our five senses and the body as a whole. In this respect human consciousness is quiet different from the consciousness of animals, that is limited to the waking and the dreaming levels of consciousness. At the level of the molecule, the atom seems not to exist. At the level of the atom, the subatomic particles seem to be out of view. At the level of the subatomic particles, the unified field of all the laws of nature, where all matter- and energy fields find their non-material / transcendental unifying source, is no reality. So, from my point of view nature transcends itself over and over again, till time and space are transcended also. Can you say that the unified field of all the laws of nature does not exist, because it can not be seen by the eye (level of the body)? Can you say that the human spirit can not be experienced by itself (beyond the level of the body) because we are the body-mind? I don’t think so, but far beyond this discussion: Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have no charity… etc. Love is the essence and in this respect, far beyond opinions, I still have to learn a lot and this love – between brothers too –is (for me) much more important than any discussion whatsoever.
Have a nice day!