Today, like many days, I slipped down a rabbit hole. Not a physical one, like Alice chasing a white rabbit, but a spiral of philosophical, mystical, and spiritual wondering.
I found myself questioning whether this oversized brain of ours—this mighty frontal cortex that has birthed rocket ships, quantum science, and digital empires—is truly a gift or a severance. A severing from the raw pulse of reality, from the wild magic all around us, from the wordless communion that the rest of life seems to inhabit so effortlessly.
For a moment, I longed to inhabit the nervous system of a bee. To be fully attuned to the Earth’s ley lines, to read the Sun’s vibrations, to taste the electric whispers of flowers. What would it be like to live entirely surrendered to that frequency, unburdened by to-do lists and glowing screens?
For a moment, I longed to stand on four legs, wrapped in the body and spirit of a deer. To sleep on crushed leaves beneath moonlit trees. To drink in the scents of the forest as my daily gospel. To grow and shed antlers with the seasons. To rise with my herd at dawn, walking the ancient trails through a forest I know not from books or maps but from something far older than thought—embodied belonging.
For a moment, I longed to be an Oak tree. No mind. No story. No ambition. Just a vast nervous system rooted into mycelial wisdom, feeling the slow eruption of new leaves from my bark, birthing acorns and releasing them, receiving Sun and storm with the same open branches. Centuries passing like breaths.
For a moment, I longed to be one of those single-celled drifters of the ocean. Floating, unhurried. No clocks. No taxes. No striving. Carried by currents. Bathed in sunlight. Drinking salt. And someday—perhaps today—surrendering to the open mouth of a great whale.
Is there less meaning in their lives than ours? Less love? Fewer connections? I don’t think so. In their silent presence, I feel something vast, an ancient knowing that requires no words, no theories, no accomplishments. Just pure presence. Undistracted. Unafraid.
And perhaps we humans are simply an experiment. Something that Earth, or God, or Mystery concocted on a drunken night of creation, curious to see what would happen if a species could ponder its own existence. How long we’d last, whether it would be beautiful or tragic, or both.
I wonder what they, these trees, these bees, these ancient waters, feel when they observe us now. Are they proud? Disappointed? Or do they still hold us with that strange, unconditional love I sometimes feel pulsing through the land, as if they are still hoping we might remember. Hoping we awaken into timeless presence. Perhaps even praying for us.
We could have been made for this strange paradox to carry both awe and foolishness. To write poems. To sing. To shape clay. To love with wild hearts. To dream of stars. Maybe we are a mythopoetic expression of God’s own longing to see itself dance.
Or that is my hope, that somehow, this strange thing called us carries a purpose slightly more enduring than a grain of sand, somewhat brighter than a firefly’s brief spark.
But truthfully, I don’t know. None of us know. And perhaps that unknowing is a kind of mercy. It keeps us humble beneath a 300-year-old Oak. Humbled by the galaxies spinning overhead. Humbled by the microbes that will one day consume us. Humbled by the quiet wisdom of a single bee.
These words I just shared may be unnecessary, I recognize that. Or they are simply my humbling attempt to taste the belonging that all those “others” seem to live so effortlessly.
Reprinted with permission from the author.
