The Simplicity and Confusion of Existing

I was driving home after a quick session of paperwork and training with Buffalo Wild Wings, when I decided to call my mom. Her voice crackled over the Bluetooth speakers in my car as we exchanged quick life updates. My GPS, Debra, tried to announce the upcoming turns but her robotic British voice quickly became buried under my conversation. Two wrong turns later (sorry Debra), I found myself in a small parking lot with a playground on the right and a tangle of trees on the left. My heart began to do a happy dance, and I could almost taste the pine needle-y tang of the woods. “Hey mom, so, I wasn’t paying attention and I’m like at a park or something? I’m gonna go have an adventure, bye!” my voice rushed excitedly. After hanging up and stepping out of the car, my enthusiasm wavered. The forest looked pretty shallow and was littered with picnic tables and fire pits. Despite the run-down, low-budget park vibes I was getting, it was still just a park. Maybe not an adventure. I decided to trudge deeper through the trees, crunchy leaves and springy detritus cushioning my footsteps. I found a murky stream and a bridge traveling over it, but the bridge was blocked off for construction. I was disappointed but decided to follow the length of the stream, hoping it would lead somewhere. After a few minutes of nothing, the river widened its mouth into a lake, a sparkling cliché with blue waters nestled by trees. I giggled out loud like a crazy person and finger-gunned the heavens, thanking God or life or whomever for this discovery. There was a massive tree that had fallen on the shoreline, its roots on land but the trunk and branches stretching horizontally into the center of the lake. It looked sturdy enough for a 21-year-old trapped in the body of a prepubescent male, so I clambered up the roots and awkwardly crab walked sideways across the trunk. When I reached the middle of the tree, I looked around and realized I was smack dab in the middle of a glittering lake, surrounded by budding trees and birdsong. After a month of friendship problems, unnecessary drama, mental health struggles, and more life lessons than I was able to handle, there was suddenly a pause. A silence. There was just a lake, just a fallen tree, just a forest. A piece of litter floating sadly but amicably under my right foot. My phone creating an uncomfortable bump in my jeans pocket. Birds spreading gossip in treetops. Normally when I go on adventures I try to uncover some hidden truth about myself, mining greedily for wisdom in my subconscious so that later I can brag about my findings. I had the urge to find meaning in sitting in the middle of a lake, treating myself like my own therapy patient, asking myself in a faux-sympathetic voice, “Well, how do you feel?” But I stopped myself, thinking, “Maybe this doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it doesn’t need to. Just exist.” It sounds pretty simple, but to an anxious 21-year-old with not many friends and a tendency to overthink, it was the biggest revelation. I turned off my phone (after some shameless selfie taking), lay back on the tree trunk, and breathed in the cold, bright air. The sun made blinding patterns on the lake, and a hesitant breeze mussed up its glossy surface. I didn’t analyze anything or try to feel anything, just watched the world unfold artfully around me. There were times when anxious thoughts slithered into my mind, and I didn’t try to block them or correct them. I let them exist, giving them validity but not truth. When I felt ready, I did my awkward crab walk back down the tree trunk and stepped back into the forest, refreshed and content. I cried in my car in my apartment’s parking lot, not wanting to strap my burdens on again. But then I realized that place wasn’t going anywhere. The park wasn’t some magic little detour away from “real life,” it was real life in its truest existing form. Things just existing, growing, dying, breathing, living. And if I didn’t need to assign meaning in a place of intense beauty (with so much potential for symbolism and interpretation), maybe I didn’t need to assign meaning to anything. Maybe, at least sometimes, I could just leave life alone and exist in it. I still feel bogged down and stressed out, as every college kid does, as every human does, but there is no judgment in it. I made some wrong turns from work and found a tree on a lake in the woods. Nature has no binary system— no good or bad, no success or failure. No judgment. And if nature is the purest form of existence, and I want to exist, then I’m not going to try and live a certain way to appease myself, my friends, or societal norms. I don’t need to assign meaning. I don’t need to label myself as a good or nice person—bear with me here, I know that is A Sentence. Nature isn’t good-hearted, and it certainly is not nice. Some people love it, some people hate it, and it keeps existing regardless. I realized all this in the middle of a lake and said “Oh!” out loud into the brisk afternoon sunlight, before chuckling to myself with the simplicity and relief of it all. And now I exist. I have officially welcomed myself into the world. I am so excited.