Good morning.
Happy Monday.
Here we are. After all, it’s the only place to be, right? Here? Right now, anyway. Never forget that the world is a funny place.
But it seems to me, from time to time, the question that doesn’t get asked enough is “Where is here?” (Or, in the more popular Spanish phrase, ¿Donde esta aqui?)
Something that strikes me every time I scale the Grand Monadnock and gaze from the crags of the summit over all the lands of New England (come on, it’s all the populated lands, anyway. And I know I’m looking out over areas that contain towns and highways and even cities. In some cases, I can see them. But mostly all I see is trees, and it’s not an illusion.
We live in one of the most densely populated areas in the United States, and yet when you actually take a look at it from really high up, you see that that all the territory of our vast and terminal civilization is still…mostly trees.
If you take that thought a little further, you may find it changes, somewhat, our definition of here. We think we’re in our buildings within our cities and towns and on our carved and paved streets and in our meticulously groomed houses when really, all that time, we’re doing our thing in the middle of a vast – and likely quite magical – forest.
We can’t see any of it as magical, of course, because we fail to see a forest at all.
But it’s there. We live in it. We are creatures of that forest – and it’s a relatively young forest, for what it’s worth.
Whatever happens today, whatever happens while you’re here – because, again, there’s no place else to be – remember that nothing is that big of a deal, because you and everyone else are a bunch of forest creatures in a giant big mystical forest that’s bigger than all of us and even our struggles.
The imaginary world is real. Breathe in that sharp spring air – even if you have to sneeze and medicate afterwards. Here we are. Let’s be cool about it.
Salaam.
Christopher J. DiLoreto 