Daybreak

I have many thoughts. Most are hard to write down. Many are easier, and some are very easy to write.

The things that I have learned by schooling and books are the easiest to communicate--because, for the most part, they are just facts, and lack depth. The thoughts that are hardest to write down are the things that I have learned by experience. Not just the uniformity of work, school, and mundane social interactions--rather, the deep things that can be learned only by looking at the sky, the stars, the dirt, and the beauties of life.

 

I believe that one of the greatest tragedies of the modern world is that man has, in a multitude of ways, lost touch with reality. We think reality is found in learning, in books, in lectures and experiments, in shows and entertainment, in screens and chatrooms. Certainly, these things hint at reality and can teach us much about it, but nothing can compare to sitting on the ground and watching the sun rise in the morning.

 

There is something about watching a sunrise even over a sunset. The sunrise signals in the dawn of a new day, full of bright future and possibilities. A sunset, on the other hand, ushers in the dusk of night, where fear and misery naturally have brewed inside and outside the mind of mankind for Millennia.

 

We are meant to look outside of ourselves.

 

The watching of bugs crawling across the ground, or birds flying in the sky, teaches an unparalleled amount of knowledge. We were not meant to stare at screens all day--we are meant to be free.

 

When man does not look at the world outside of himself, he begins to look inward upon himself. This can be a good at times, but in today's world, more often creates an addictive spiral of self-assessment, self-diagnosis, and self-help --which then repeats to no avail.

 

When man loses touch with the natural world, he inevitably turns in on himself and tries to find the adventure, beauty, and tragedy of his outside environment within the walls of his mind--or most tragically, in the walls of a screen. This is a hopeless task, which he is doomed to fail at--man cannot find what he seeks in that which he has created, or within his mind. It is only by looking outside of himself that we become free.

 

Watch the sunset tomorrow morning. Look outside. Watch the birds. Feel the breeze.

 

 


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