We are born into a world of expectations. Depending on our color, nationality, our economic class, our gender, maybe our politics, our faith, where we were born, or perhaps, how much money we inherited or made, the world subtly and astonishingly, makes judgments about our value--and sometimes, even our right to exist. It is an ancient longing for connectedness which we have lost, that burdens us to establish control and power over the unknown or different; that urges us to say who is acceptable through categorization and labeling. It would be naive to believe there is not conflict and struggle for power and dominance among the myriad species of the Real World, but it remains a place where there is acknowledgment of the value of all species to the whole, regardless of whether you are dinner or not. When we feel defeated and rejected by the expectations of the man made world, this is the place that always welcomes and accepts. The more distant we become from it, the more we determine our intrinsic worthiness to be based on what we accumulate or achieve. A connection to the natural world teaches us what we have forgotten: that being valuable or acceptable is not selective or achievable. Everything and everyone, already is.One ran,
her nose to the ground,
a rusty shadow
neither hunting nor playing.
One stood; sat; lay down; stood again.
One never moved,except to turn her head a little as we walked.
Finally we drew too close,
and they vanished.
The woods took them back as if they had never been.
I wish I had thought to put my face to the grass.
But we kept walking,
speaking as strangers do when becoming friends.
There is more and more I tell no one,
strangers nor loves.
This slips into the heart
without hurry, as if it had never been.
And yet, among the trees, something has changed.
Something looks back from the trees,
and knows me for who I am.
Jane Hirshfield, Three Foxes by the Edge of the Field at Twilight
