Tuesday 12.14.10: Go to the Woods

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. For I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonley when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers."  Henry David Thoreau

Solitude is beautiful. Wilderness is breathtaking. Yet both are also unforgiving and unpredictable. Why do I go to the woods? Why do I yearn for solitude? Why do I yearn to exit society and its norms? The essential fact of life is that we live and we die. Wilderness brings us back to our primal state. Where our goal, above all else, is to survive. The struggle for survival hightens awareness and arouses senses that have been long made dormant by society and the increased use of technology. You will never feel more alive then standing in the middle of nowhere in below zero temperatures, or paddling a canoe on a lake where the silence is so deafening that it is sound all to itself. Wilderness forces us to face our fears, and embrace the unknown. It shows us that we are not all powerful, but at the complete mercy of something far greater than ourselves, which is directly in contrast with the disallusionist messages of modern society.

The solitude found in the utter silences of the woods are a companion to us. It is strange how the hours we used to watch television fly by when we are secluded in a quiet borrow, caught in the depth of our own thoughts, running conversations with ourselves, staging debates with imaginary people or arguing with ourselves over the next step in our journey. The voices inside of your head slowly become as an old friend. This is not insanity, I would argue that this is a hightened sense of awareness, this is facing one of the undeniable facets of life, that seclusion and isolation for periods of time are healthy, invigorating and absalutely necessary for finding out exactly who you are and what your purpose in this world is... How much can you possibly know about yourself if you have not been in a fight? This does not particulary mean a literal fight, but any sort of struggle where failure is a likely outcome. It could be a struggle for survival or the struggle to mend a relationship lost or the struggle to understand something far more vast than our imaginations can even fathom such as nature or God.

Therefore I go to the woods, my own wilderness. I go to solitude to escape society. To find who I truly am apart from what the magazines, books, media and others try to mold me to be. I invert back to the essential facts of life, that I was born and that I will die. That how I use the time inbetween will directly effect how I spend eternity. That I was created by something greater than myself. I search for the unknown, I search for my purpose. I search for the will of God. I invite the struggle that comes, for without it how can I find out who I truly am? How can I find out my purpose in life? How can I find if I am ready for the calling God has for my life?