Embracing the Unknown and simplicity
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In all my years on this beautiful planet of ours, I've never camped outside. I tried once when I was seven or eight, sleeping in a cousin's tent in the front of their wooded property with a few of their friends. I got about an hour into the sun setting before I got scared and went back inside to the safety and creature comforts that were familiar to me. I've never forgotten that day - How I let my fear get the best of me and my unwillingness to explore the unknown.
I spent my first night outside in the woods yesterday. It was a gorgeous night And the moon was a sliver crescent that I could just barely see through the rolling clouds, Waves and waves of them speeding through the night sky and obscuring the stars and planets that I had hoped to be able to watch through my sunroof. The sound of birds occasionally breaking up the electric screaming of cicadas, with the random hooting of an owl interspersed in the night time orchestra.
Somehow, as I lay there uncomfortably on my reclined passenger seat with a blanket underneath me as a mattress, spending these relatively quiet moments to give my mind a chance to process the last three years and all their difficulty, my mind turned back to my last partner and how my actions had failed us. How I had failed myself in standing up for the man I thought I wanted to be at the time. Making efforts not to place judgments anywhere. It's a difficult thing, that. Judging others can be an easy way to feel superior or righteous, even if it is just in your own mind, and I am a human who enjoys having these feelings of superiority. I've always been a person who enjoys being right. Sometimes, I'd allow people around me to act or react foolishly when I reached the end of my wits.
The thing that brought me out of despair over the holidays of last year was the important realization that in order to grow and improve my ability to connect and communicate during hard times I needed to improve my connection and communication with myself. Out in the woods, sweating in a hot car on an 80° night surrounded by darkness and the sounds of an unconcerned natural world, I made new introduction to myself. I made no new promises, nor did I swear to upkeep old ones.
I spoke to myself, and I listened, and the trees listened too. They had no wisdom or judgment for me. Just listening.
I learned a lot from the trees last night.