Don't Feed the Beast

Sometimes I think about trees and what it must be like to be a tree, especially a tree by a babbling brook or a rushing river, a tree that sways in the breeze and grows toward the light. A tree that is home to squirrels or sloths or orangutans, or a tree that produces sap or gives a woodpecker something to peck or a child something to climb. I don’t know how that would feel, but there are times I think it must be lovely.

Photo by niko photos on Unsplash

It sounds lovely because you’d be alive, but you wouldn’t be wracked with worry about money or health insurance and copays, or if your last thread was witty enough or if anyone even saw it because links don’t work there. You wouldn’t worry about how often you were posting, or about like-counts or subscriber numbers or how crazily expensive college is, or about that dumb thing you said or texted that you can’t unsay or un-text. You’d just be there, swaying in the breeze by the babbling brook or the rushing river with the sun shining upon you, or the rain storming down, or the wind whipping through your branches. In autumn, your leaves would turn magical colors and then they’d fall to the ground and become part of the ecosystem, and eventually things would get cold and your branches might be covered in ice but it would be okay, because you’d understand, deep into your roots that this was just a season. 

Or maybe it would be better to be a bird, because then you could fly anywhere you wanted without driving to LAX or getting charged for your seat selection and your baggage and probably your oxygen if things keep going this way. You wouldn’t have to choose your meal because worms would do, and you wouldn’t have any baggage because I don’t think birds dwell on why their brother or sister got more worms that one time, or how other birds always get more breaks, or how nobody likes them and they’re probably going to die alone without an emergency contact. Birds can fly over five hours at a time, and up to about a hundred miles distance because they aren’t weighed down by family drama and the awful rift between Janet and Uncle Henry over that crappy thing he said at a wedding seven years ago. They just go about their bird business doing their bird things.

I saw a whale breach on my 41st birthday. I was on a whale-watching boat in Cabo with my kids and a few close friends and I felt so at ease there wasn’t anything I wanted except to be right where I was with the people I loved most, with the wind whipping around me and the taste of saltwater on my tongue. We’d been on the water for about an hour with no whales in sight, so I closed my eyes and made a birthday wish, and when I opened them, a whale came flying straight up out of the ocean, so majestic and so incredibly defying gravity and physics and anything else that made sense, I threw my head back and laughed. I cried, too, because there are so many beautiful things under the sun. The whale was so close to us we all got wet when it went back under, flicking its tail as a final goodbye. It must be incredible to be a whale swimming through the ocean, getting to see all the coral and octopuses, all the colors and wonders below sea level, knowing that you’re mostly safe from predators because you can just eat them if you need to, except for orcas or humans who want to hurt you, but it’s likelier than not you wouldn’t run into any of them. You could just swim and play and have your whale babies and not worry about whether we’re ever going to ban assault weapons so you can kiss your kids goodbye in the morning without the ever-present under-worry. You could form some long term relationships if you want to, and come up for a breath every fifteen minutes or so, and if you felt like it you could breach the surface and show the other whales your dominance or delight any human beings who happened to be fortunate enough to see. 

Photo by Todd Cravens on Unsplash

If you’re a hopeless romantic like me, then you want to be a sandhill crane because they mate for life and dance together and call out to one another just because they want to bond. All they seem to care about is being near each other and eating. That sounds good to me. If you like a little bit of drama, then a swan is your bird because those fuckers also mate for life, but sometimes when one partner dies, the other one pulls a Romeo and/or Juliet and joins them. I think that’s extreme, but you have to do you. All I know is swans don’t seem to worry about rent because the Queen owns them even though she’s gone now (I guess this means the King owns them) and I don’t totally know how that works or who decided the Crown would own the swans or whether the swans got a vote, but they seem free to swim wherever they like. They don’t have to worry about a working wage or childcare or whether they need an updated headshot or resume. They don’t stop what they’re doing to take a selfie, or think about whether they’ve been productive enough in a day. They just swim, man. No PTO needed.

Photo by Onur Binay on Unsplash

Meanwhile human beings seem determined to kill each other and/or obsess about lots of meaningless crap, like how much they weigh or whether they have too much hair in some places and not enough in others, whether they’ll be happy when they have more money than they need, or a faster car or a different partner or more fame (no, no, no, no, no, also no), whether their “reach” is expanding at a rapid enough pace, whether everyone likes them or no one likes them, whether they like everyone or hate everyone, whether everyone is lonely and cries themselves to sleep sometimes (yes), whether other people swing between rampant self-doubt and obnoxious self-confidence as frequently and violently (probably yes), and/or if it’s normal to spend so much time staring at screens (no). When they aren’t obsessing about that stuff, or keeping themselves so busy they can avoid thinking about the thing nagging them underneath all those other things - (the thing they need to solve so they can find some inner ease) - they’re dwelling on things that happened five years ago, five months ago, five days ago and five minutes ago, and also things that might happen five minutes, days, months or years from now…bypassing the present moment altogether, feeling overwhelmed and misunderstood, prioritizing all the pointless garbage, and then wondering why they feel utterly alone, scared and miserable so much of the time. 

Maybe the best possible thing you can be is a human being sitting underneath a tree by a babbling brook or a rushing river with the sun shining down and the breeze blowing by, with the birds overhead and the whales swimming in an ocean somewhere not too far away as the sandhill cranes and Crown-owned swans bring on the romance and the drama. Maybe we have everything we need to have the most incredible experience, if only we’d stop and pay attention. 

I am traveling this week, so I won’t be recording the podcast live, but it will be ready for you Saturday as usual. And if you’d like to meet me in Portugal in June, there are still a few spots left, and I’d love that so much. You can bet we’ll be sitting underneath some trees, breathing deeply and paying attention to the best stuff in life.