So much stuff, so little peace

I’ve never been camping but I hear it’s beautiful. I’ve never been much of an outdoorsman but I desire to commune with nature in an organic way the older I get. Right now, I’m tired of all the stuff that I’m so desperate to hold on to, all the stuff that I can’t take with me when I’m gone.

Maybe in a forest somewhere there’s an ideal beauty that we can’t fathom in our busy cities, in our busy lives. We rush to hold up the foundations of an economy and society built on nothingness by doing activities that were created to placate us from a deeper reality.

I think the movie “The Matrix” was prophetic in how absorbed we can be into things that really don’t matter. In our Facebook feeds and Instagram channels, we’re consuming gulps of emptiness to feed a part of us that detaches us more and more from reality.

We are truly keeping up with the Kardashians mimicking a “reality” TV star life that’s far from truth. The minute that they’re followed around with cameras their lives quit being real and became productions that we consume as truth.

What is real? That is the question.

Are we really living or are we being controlled by all of our attachments? Do we have cell phones or do they have us? All of our attachments bring us to a place of dependence on that which is not in us.

I think about older society and the jobs that were performed. They had worth and value. They were straight forward and moved us to activity.

I watch a lot of “The Walking Dead” and sometimes I wonder could I survive in a post apocalyptic world where lawlessness abounds and survival goes beyond reliance on McDonalds and a television screen. In a world where only the strong survive would I be strong enough? Part of me hopes I’ll never have to find out the answer to that question, that I can live as is in a world where we’re consumed by stuff. But that question still prevails in the back of my mind. I find myself wondering if I could scavenge for food or hunt like so many locals I know around here are able to do.

That’s one beautiful thing about the rural life. You can often find those that can hunt and gather and can build fires.

Maybe growing up in the “city” has hampered me from being able to truly fend for myself.

How many of us are truly self-reliant?

Now, obesity sets its foot on our necks. Gluttony causes us to consume more than we need at the buffets around town. We’re filling our stomachs instead of our souls.

Is there a method to the madness or are we running around crazy for no reason at all except to continue to juggle what we’ve acquired, all of our stuff? I’ve heard someone refer to the tyranny of choice, of choosing something to eat for dinner as a first world problem.

I’d say those self-made troubles are holding us back from being truly alive, of really living. I think about the forest again. Naturalist and essayist Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “All good things are wild and free.”

The poet Walt Whitman wrote, “I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long.

… Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things.”

“The mania of owning things,” is the part that gets me. And the idea of being “one” with nature, whatever that looks like, is a precious thing. I hope that one day I’ll find myself unplugging from the matrix of this life, that I’ll find myself rising above the rat race and living in a place where there is truly inner peace. Because there may come a day where my life depends on my ability to live beyond these empty earthly treasures that I spend time maintaining.

Chandler Collins is a staff writer for The Southeast Sun and Daleville Sun-Courier. The opinions of this writer are his own and not the opinion of the paper. He can be reached at (334) 393-2969 or by email at [email protected].