We weren’t born to sit still.  We don’t have legs so they can be cramped up under the minimal square footage of an office desk, chained to tax forms, invoices, and endless streams of paperwork that carry on like a CVS receipt, 20% off your next purchase of items you don’t need that this world says you need because we’re buying into all the wrong things.

Our minds weren’t made to ponder impractical problems they were made to reflect upon the awe of this universe.  They weren’t made to count out dividends they were made to fathom the great infinity of the stars above our heads.  Our hands weren’t made to cradle ballpoint pens they were made to firmly grasp the surface of this world, to feel the sharp indentation of slate against skin the gentle trickle of water between fingers.  Our faces were made to greet the warmth of the sun not the false glow of halogen lighting and yet we sit, imprisoned.  Our legs growing numb our hands growing unused to the texture of vivacity the pallor of our faces growing pale beneath the plastic panes of manufactured light.  All this growing and still no growth.

The soul of this world yearns for us to meet her.  She is calling out for us her whisper beckons at the windows late at night and yet we think it is the wind and so we lock them tight and we never know what we are missing.  She is begging for the feeling of our bare feet upon her flesh and yet we tie on shoes and never know the warmth of her embrace or face the blessings that she gives.  Her cry is lost in radio waves and the pitchy rings of cell phone tones that drone in synchrony and symphony but never meaning.  She is trying to be heard but we’ve forgotten the sound of her voice and we’ve forgotten how to translate her words and so we complain about the heavy mists that assault us in the early hours of the morning but it is merely her, begging to be felt by us.

But we are disconnected.  Unaware of all that we are missing in the wake of a world that is demanding that we listen but our ears are plugged by headphones manufactured for the sole purpose of blocking out the music that is reality in favor of the music that is made in factories.  This is the greatest tragedy to befall our race it is a travesty that we cannot recognize the beauty in the natural world.

Calendars of national parks hang from the walls above our cubicles and yet we’ve never adventured farther than the local park where trash cans fail to restrain the garbage that collects in metropolitan districts the only waterfall we’ve ever seen is the drinking fountain that sits, corroded and unused, at the end of whitewashed hallways where footsteps echo in sharp discordant melodies within our heads.

We climbed a hill once and we thought it was a mountain we were panting at the top because our lungs are clogged with city slicker smoke and fumes and cheap perfumes that designate the high brow from the low brow as if money is the price we pay for worth.

And once, late at night, coming home from work your eyes were teary your mind was weary the dotted white lines of the road grew bleary you hit a deer and that’s the closest you’ve ever gotten to wildlife, the broken carcass that now lies decomposing by the side of the road waiting for animal control to make its rounds and make right what you made wrong.

You think that maybe you’ll go on a hike and you’ll reconnect with the ancient ancestral ties your Native American heritage demands of you and so you follow the well worn trail head for a couple of miles and you’ll see a bluebird and comment on the beautiful luminescence of its wings contrasted against a hazy sky but even to your own mind the utterances sound false and empty as they bounce back against the ancient cave paintings that you have surely missed because your fingers were too busy hashtagging the word nature.  Like for like.  Follow for follow.

We are missing the point.  We are missing everything.  In our search for likes and follows and acceptance in this poor excuse for culture we are lost and unloved.

Take off your shoes.  Put aside your phones. Remove the earplugs and look into the eyes of the person speaking to you.  Listen to the melodies of the wind gaze longingly upon a sunset without feeling the need to capture a cheap mimesis of its essence in a filtered photograph.  Embrace solitude.  Reflect in silence.  Climb a mountain not a hilltop your bones will creak and they will moan and groan and your joints will cry out throughout in pain but they are thanking you.  Learn the language of your body learn the language of this world listen.  Stop speaking.  Listen.  She is calling you home.  Can you hear her beckon?