Forest Green
A friend once painted a beautiful quote on a canvas for me about climbing mountains and making pathways in the wilderness and creating rivers in the wastelands. I often find myself looking at the canvas, and for a moment it sparks a light in me that keeps me going. But, the light is always flickering. It’s never constant. Some days are easier than others, but most days it always feels like something is missing.
I don’t know what it is that I’m looking for. How can I when I haven’t even experienced all the things the world can offer me? Yes, I’ve gone places and seen things so many others haven’t. I have been taught by myself and others and I have grown into my own special individual. But the need to be struck with a wave of inspiration is so deep that I wonder if anything will ever be able to fuel it.
There is so much that I want to see and do and experience in this life, that there is simply not enough time to do it. I want to travel and learn about different cultures. I want to experience the world and become knowledgeable in things that school can’t teach me. I want to become more than myself.
Someone once told me that I was rich. I was rich because I had traveled to places that some people could never even imagine. In her eyes, I was rich because I had the money to travel to these places. In reality, I am the furthest thing from rich. I have nothing but the experiences I have gained and the memories that I have. If you asked me then if I thought I was rich I would have responded negatively. But now, I consider myself so rich and filled with life lead by my experiences, but I’ve turned greedy.
I’m greedy for experiences, for travel, for knowledge. None of these things can be bought with dull green dollar bills. I want to connect with the world and learn everything and see everything, and I will never stop being greedy for that.
Walt Whitman wrote a beautiful poem– Song of Myself. One if the central messages in the poem is the relationship between the self and the universe and how we do not have an understanding of the world until we are able to connect with nature and the people around us. He writes about how we are all connected and “every atoms belonging to me as good belongs to you.” This is what I want: to be connected to the world.
I read the poem for the first time when I was 15. Almost seven years later, and I have just begun to understand what Walt Whitman was describing in the poem. Your song is your life. You are what you make of yourself. You chose who you connect with and who gets to share your life with you. I haven’t found what I’m looking for yet. I don’t think I can move mountains or fill the wastelands with rivers. There isn’t a song that I can keep for myself.
What if my song isn’t just one song? What if I’m not meant to do just one thing with the life that was given to me? What if the song for myself is a collaboration of songs and people and places and for the rest of my life I won’t ever settle down, trying to further connect myself with the world and its people?
I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I do know that whatever my song is, it will take me to where I need to be. I will build those mountains and make pathways in the wilderness and create rivers in the wastelands. I will do all that and more, and that will be the song for myself.