thumbprints like snowflakes
observation is crucial to matter
The other day my partner brought up the James Webb telescope and we were discussing how its findings are teaching humanity lessons that are fundamentally changing how we view the universe and everything therein. They are realizing that observation is crucial on matter. From what I’ve studied and read over the years, people have been trying to point to this experience for a long time and now the astrophysicists are learning it in real time.
What an individual observes, creates the moment. It is from our perception and beliefs we are able to create these observations and why life can seem so different person to person. It's impossible for anyone else in all of time and space to ever have your perspective and not just in an abstract sense, in a literal one. As I sit here typing these words, I am occupying space time. No one else can occupy this space time but me. Therefore, this is a one of a kind moment. One of a kind observation. Our perspectives and our experiences lend their lens to our observation and help us to make meaning of what is before us. Our observations are like our thumb prints, like every snowflake that falls from the sky, one of a kind, unique moments in time.
Despite this knowledge, conformity runs a muck all around us. For various reasons both known and unknown we like to try and package people like we do chicken bits on an assembly line. I used to be all packaged up, cut up into various bits and parts of myself. Contorted and lifeless on a bed of styrofoam, clear plastic wrap atop for everyone to see. Making sure that I was just like them. Thinking, feeling, talking, and presenting, just like them.
There came a day though I could no longer stay in those unnatural shapes. That deaden state of living. I had to break free.
Queen, or rather Freddie Mercury was one of my idols. I remember being a small kid in the basement of our rental home, sitting on furry carpet that was a multi-color of red, brown, and hints of gold. Watching the television one evening with my family. There was breaking news. Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the band called Queen had died of AIDS. I never knew who he was until he was gone. But as I sat there watching him perform, seeing everyone around the world mourn for this person, something inside of me woke up. I remember asking who he was, why he died. I remember listening to Bohemian Rhapsody, listening to the lyrics and feeling so much sadness in the words. I didn't want to die either. Why did he wish he had never been born at all? Big questions for a small kid. I was impacted greatly by that moment.
Once I was old enough to make a little cash and have my own stereo I bought a 2 disc compilation of Queen. I listened to it endlessly. I felt I had so much in common with Freddie. There were so many aspects of his perspective that resonated. And to this day, when I hear him singing “I want to break free" in my head, I know there is some work to do. The spirit of Freddie coming to and through me, helping me see there is something holding me back, and it's time to rip the plastic wrap off and begin something new.
Breaking free from the mindset I was brought in on, is something I now consider miraculous and down right heroic. Oppression of the mind is painful and wrought with many obstacles. Much of which for me revolved around being a good person. I wanted to be a good" person. I looked around and saw so many people, not being "good". And I knew that wasn't the answer. However, I didn't like the playbooks for “good” I was offered as a child. Those weren't my answer either. At some point I had to come to the conclusion that my emotions were guiding me somewhere I'd never been. My body seemed to know something my mind didn't. Could that be possible? How could my distorted bits that were once prepackaged for sale, be the ones to guide me out of this mess?
As it turned out, those bits were exactly what I needed. The problem was, first I needed to get them properly aligned and living again. I needed to pick myself up off that styrofoam, reassemble what had been damaged, and I needed to CARE for myself. I needed to bring that franken-mess of a body back to life. But how?
2016 was the year this process began to move in noticeable ways, though I couldn't have known it at the time. It's a messy story when I think back, but the important part to know is I had a partner whom I loved (and still love) deeply, who was experiencing debilitating back pain. This is something he had been dealing with for 8 years by this point and already had many procedures.
Though it wasn't me in pain, I was being deeply affected by the experience. Watching someone you love in physical and emotional pain is taxing on existence. Especially when you think you have no way of helping them. And as it is for many of us, through our desires to help the ones we love the most out of their pain, we find important information that helps us on our journey.
So, I researched high and low for ways to help, anything I could get my hands on. I was looking for something outside of what he had already done, which meant going down the alternative route…
I came upon a book about pain. I honestly don’t remember which book it was. I remember telling my partner to give it a listen, but it wasn’t something he was interested in at the time. So, naturally - I started listening. It was discussing the nature of pain and how much of it resides in the mind and our experience more-so than within the physical self. There is physical pain, yes - however it’s manifesting from somewhere else. It was confounding to me on many levels. Confronting even. As you can tell from the fact I don’t remember the book, I didn’t read the whole thing. The piece of advice I took from it though, was pain can be transformed with meditation. Which at the time was a completely foreign concept.
From that piece of information I was beguiled and immediately began looking for guided meditations. It would be hard to look for pain healing meditations without running across Louise Hay, and sure enough - though I didn’t know who she was at the time, I ended up with a meditation from her.
I remember being home alone, hungover, as I was so often at this time in my life and had just gotten out of the shower. I was naked laying on our bed. I began to listen to her words. She was speaking about the body in ways I had never heard anyone before. Talking about thanking the body, holding different parts of your body and actually saying “thank you”. Thank you to your toes, and your knees. Thank you to your skin and your bones. Giving presence to your body and being unabashedly grateful for these pieces that allow you to experience the world.
I remembered sobbing as I went through this meditation. Being vulnerable with myself in ways I’d never considered. Holding my toes…and crying. Gently massaging my knees…and sobbing. I had never even thought to acknowledge my body before, let alone thank her for something. It was humbling to be sure. And it changed me forever. I couldn’t undo that experience. A sacred moment on my journey I never could have planned for myself. I never could have known. Through my desires to help my partner, I ended up helping myself in ways that continue to affect me.
It was through this experience that morning, a desperate longing I’d been experiencing for years came roaring to the surface. A longing that ached my heart in ways I couldn’t understand. Reflecting back on all the tears shed on my pillow each night, wondering what was wrong with me and why I was so sad. I worked in what I thought were fulfilling jobs, I gave everything I had to my life and my partner, and still I felt empty inside. I blamed everything and anyone around me for my condition. It was in this moment with my body I realized it was a lack of consideration for my being, a neglect of my soul-filled physical self, and internal landscape that had left me void of wholeness and desperately longing.
In the past this longing had lead me to search, for what I didn’t know, but I remember always hearing something along the lines of “remember what you really loved as a child”. What I loved the most about childhood was playing outdoors. I had more bug barns than you could shake a stick at and rock collections that could put any geologist to shame. I watched shows about animals and then tried to mimic scientists experiences in our backyard. Catching snakes just like how they said they did, putting them into pillowcases so you could watch them without hurting them. (I always let them free afterward, of course. I adore animals.) Exploring what trees were made of and what parts I could get my sisters to eat. What was below the surface of the ground and why it was so lumpy. I was infatuated.
Like most children though, we grow up and are shown what we are supposed to be in order to please others, rather than how we truly are and we begin to conform in subtle ways everyday, for years, until we are a mere mirage of our former selves. Cold, lifeless chicken bits on a bed of styrofoam, resting atop that weird plastic stuff that absorbs death liquids. It becomes years before we even realize, if ever, that we are living a life that was shown to us by another rather than expressing the purely authentic life of our innocent, loving human soul.
And I had reflected on these experiences from childhood and said, okay but how is that supposed to be my longing? I can’t make a life from catching bugs or collecting rocks (even though technically you can). I’d asked over and over again “what is it I’m looking for?”, the word “Nature” came to me repeatedly. What was at the core of all my loves? Nature. But what did that mean exactly? Nature is, well at the time, I thought of Nature as the outdoors, everything outside. An enormously broad topic. So what was I supposed to do with that?
I began to look up different careers someone could do involving Nature and I came upon Naturopathic medicine. It was intriguing to me but also there were no schools close by and to top it off, it was NOT LEGAL to practice in Nebraska. (The things we do to ourselves I will never understand.) I remember researching this information at my desk working another job, circa 2008. It wouldn't be until that fateful 2016 after I began to wake my body up with meditation, a friend would suggest to me an herbalist program in my hometown that I would truly embark on my Nature journey.
Making the decision to study herbalism fundamentally changed my life in ways I have a hard time even comprehending now. The person I was before is so utterly different to who I am now I've had a hard time keeping up with old contacts because it feels impossible to explain. Herbalism and the philosophies therein, saved my life and made it profoundly better in every way. I changed my perspective of myself and my observations of the world in its entirety. The way I live now, albeit not perfect, nor ever will be (nor do I want that) is the exact life I wish to be living. The only thing I changed was how I was observing it all and allowing those observations to inform my existence.
My favorite part about this new way of observing life, is coming to an understanding that no one has the answers to anything. Each of us only have our best guesses for what this all is. We all only have our experiences and observations to understand our own existence. What it is to be human, what Earth and our experiences here are all about. We can only experiment and share those experiences in order to continue learning and growing because there is no end to it. We are all in a long spiraling of those who came before us and those who will follow.
I used to think I was looking for the truth until I realized that truth is a moving target, because truth is an observation of an individual and their collective experiences. And the more I see the world playing out at large the more apparent this is to me. What any person chooses to believe, is their truth. When belief changes, truth changes. There is nothing we can do about that. We can want others to share our truth, we can desire commonality of observations within our experiences and form groups based on shared observation in order to feel safe and yet, that's not a guarantee.
That can feel like a lonely space to inhabit but only from the view that we are separate from everything around us. When we acknowledge we are embedded within a greater web, the truth of our own personal existence can set us free from the confines of conformity and allow us to trust that our truth within our personal experience comes from a deeper connection to an intelligence supporting us in this learning journey.
The goal is not for everyone to believe the same thing, or to find the same truth. The goal is for us all to accept that everyone is having a completely unique experience and to be open-minded and open-hearted enough to be curious and learn from each other. Being gentle and kind and perhaps humorous about the whole ordeal makes the load feel lighter and the path feel brighter. Life becomes enjoyable when we aren't fighting or competing for us all to have the same observations.
It feels good to me when I learn there is coherence between the experiences I am observing that align with what humanity is learning and observing in a broader sense. There is a reliability in the gentle observance of Nature and their ancient micro-cosmic and macro-cosmic cycles that can teach us more about being human than any human I’ve met.
Nature knows the way, and as Nature shows us, the Oak can never observe the world in the same way the Wood Violet will. And we are better for it. We need only take the time enough to observe and share what is before our own eyes in our own meaningful way. Be our own truest self, everyday and know our thumbprint matters as much as the snowflake to the ecology that connects us.