I feel confused about my place in this world. I’m not sure if I should feel entirely disconnected or if I should feel as connected as ever. At the end of the day I am so small compared the rest of the world, but is this actually true? If it only takes one person to change the world then how come I feel this way? Being out in my spot in the depths of Whit Clay Creek doesn’t necessarily help ease these thoughts.

Do the squirrels, birds, frogs, and the other critters and creatures mind me being here? Am I bothering them? To me, this experience is humble and it’s a place for me to get away. How messed up is that? In order to get away and “feel more connected” to a whole different world that is Mother Nature, I have to bombard someone else’s house, completely uninvited. I wonder what this feels like for them. I know that if I saw a squirrel lounging in my house it wouldn’t be the most pleasant experience.  But is it just because they would never want to be in my house anyway? If there is one thing I have noticed throughout this time, it is that animals enjoy their familiar surroundings where as humans strive to get away from them. I’m honestly starting to get bored of my spot. I love it here but it’s just one of those things where if you stay too long in an area you want more from it. It doesn’t satisfy what I’m looking for anymore because I have formed a habituation to it, which is why I’m okay with only visiting it every now and then, not making it my home, whereas Mary Oliver seems to disagree.

When it’s all over, she doesn’t “want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened or full of argument. I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”  I for one, completely disagree. I want to find myself full of argument. I want to feel myself frightened and still debating my inner thoughts and philosophies because the more one sees, the less they know and if I still feel a sense of uncertainty the day that I die, that means I did something right. A life full of healthy argument is good. Arguing stereotypes and proving myself wrong would be a dream come true. I would love to leave this world having simply visited it because somewhere in the definition of “visiting” is the word temporary. I want to think of my life as visiting this earth rather than having just lived in it because the word visiting means no dull moment.  Think about it. When you go on vacation, you shortly “visit” an unfamiliar place and get to know it. If my life was full of “visiting”, I would want nothing more because to me, it means a life full of new experiences and an exposure to different perspectives of the world.

Also, think about it this way. Visiting home from college is always something to look forward to because home is missed. Once you leave a place, you realize your appreciation for it and spending limited time in this place develops this. Appreciation goes hand in hand with what Mary Oliver depicts throughout her short stories; the theme of how important it is to love and how crucial it is to living a good life. She says so herself that to live in this world you must be able “to do three things, to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go”.  When you spend a limited amount of time somewhere, such as on this earth, you form appreciation, and when you form appreciation, you form love.