Growing Out of Simplicity
Lately I've been thinking about the evolution of my experiences of nature as my life has progressed. I will blame my mother for my appreciation of it, as I'm fairly sure it was her intention to enthrall her son with its beauty. What I have noticed is that complexity grows with age, and as we grow up, so do our eyes.
As a child, I remember playing in the yard by myself. I wasn't an only child, but my sister was still pretty young, and besides, I had my Tonka trucks to play with. But when those Tonka trucks got boring, I would set them aside and go to the sandbox to play with the tiny rocks that get stuck in your hair. I would sit for hours and carefully study the sand: how it sifted so easily through my fingers. I could create quicksand by cupping my hands into a funnel and watching the sand slowly seep through the bottom and back into my sandbox. The tiny rocks were each different, and they had many different colors as well! On occasion, some would find its way into my mouth, where it would crunch every now and then to remind me that rocks are not to be eaten.
The question is not, "what makes sand so interesting," but rather, "why don't I do that today?" What is it about our busy lives that make us unable to sit down and sift sand? Are we too proud to be enamored by such "petty" observations? Life is about the complex things! The atoms, the reproductive cycles, the anatomy. We murder to dissect... and not just in a physical sense, but in an emotional sense too. As we grow in age, we shrink in child-like humility. The simple does not satisfy anymore. We need something more stimulating! To keep our heads thinking!
I think that God meant for nature to be something mindless, where He can say, "see how simple it all is?" I'm hoping that as I approach even higher numbers in age, that my mind will be satisfied... with the simple.
As a child, I remember playing in the yard by myself. I wasn't an only child, but my sister was still pretty young, and besides, I had my Tonka trucks to play with. But when those Tonka trucks got boring, I would set them aside and go to the sandbox to play with the tiny rocks that get stuck in your hair. I would sit for hours and carefully study the sand: how it sifted so easily through my fingers. I could create quicksand by cupping my hands into a funnel and watching the sand slowly seep through the bottom and back into my sandbox. The tiny rocks were each different, and they had many different colors as well! On occasion, some would find its way into my mouth, where it would crunch every now and then to remind me that rocks are not to be eaten.
The question is not, "what makes sand so interesting," but rather, "why don't I do that today?" What is it about our busy lives that make us unable to sit down and sift sand? Are we too proud to be enamored by such "petty" observations? Life is about the complex things! The atoms, the reproductive cycles, the anatomy. We murder to dissect... and not just in a physical sense, but in an emotional sense too. As we grow in age, we shrink in child-like humility. The simple does not satisfy anymore. We need something more stimulating! To keep our heads thinking!
I think that God meant for nature to be something mindless, where He can say, "see how simple it all is?" I'm hoping that as I approach even higher numbers in age, that my mind will be satisfied... with the simple.
posted by Austin Kruggel | 12:06 AM
1 Comments:
Austin
Its exciting to watch this blog unfolding. Memories of childhood evoked here are startlingly vivid and particularized. Speculations about simple and complex are stimulating, but the opposition you set up here doesnt necessarily hold. Your enjoyment of sand came from being able to observe the complexity in it through close immediate observation. You seem to pursue that sense of wonder now by mounting to the skies.
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