Nature vs. Industrialisation

The breeze dances through my hair, its cool fingers sliding across my arms and tickling the back of my neck. I look out at the beautiful gardens in front of me, wondering at such beauty and calm.

A loud horn breaks me from my reverie and I look out to the right to see the cars banked up on the road just outside the gardens. Unfortunately I am not in the great outdoors but in the Botanic Gardens in the middle of the city, trying to get inspired to do some study.

Being here makes me think though. What was wrong with nature and the way things were? Who woke up and decided that they needed to build a tall metal structure higher then ever before? Who decided that things would be better if we made everything synthetically, if we industrialised all the processes of life?

I realise that I am not one to talk, I have embraced this industrialised life and live with the perks of it everyday but is it really better? Is life better now that we no longer need to talk to people face to face? We can simply get on the Internet and send off a quick email or instant message.

I think that we have lost something essential to ourselves in this modern world. Life seems to be getting more and more fast paced and there seems to be less and less reasons to need to go outside or even to talk to people nowadays. Who sits outside and just listens to the birds chatter or just sits in quiet? Just thinks about life and admires the beauty around them.

It makes me wonder if the reason that there are so many people with mental illnesses is due to the modern world. A world in which the personal touch is missing, a world where taking time out can lead to missing out. Are people breaking down because they have failed to get to know themselves? Because they haven't stopped and gotten to know the world around them? Because they haven't even thought about the reason why they exist? And when they do stop to think its all too much for them. Where do you start when getting to know yourself? When you having been living your whole life getting pulled along by the current and finally stop to question. Your whole life up until then can feel meaningless. And if you have never known meaning or passion how can you even begin to try and find it?

This reminds me of the character of Dysart in the play Equus. He is a psychiatrist who is treating a particularly disturbed and confused patient, after having treated so many patients before him he begins to question his methods. Is he actually healing these patients or taking away their Passion? Is he taking away their reason for life that has been distorted or confused by society?

Dysart himself has never known Passion, not in love and not in life. When he finally tries to break away from society and find it he is at a loss of where to start. He does not know how to "cure" these patients and give them a healthy Passion because he does not know what that is. He has lived his whole life being pulled along by the current of society and now he is left with so many questions that, he feels, can never be answered.

I think that the answer to all this lies simply in nature. All the questions do not matter if you can simply be. Connect to nature, connect to who you were made to be and follow God's guiding voice. The world may be rushing and busy and the Industrialised world may be more efficient and effective but there is no substitute for life.

Life and meaning cannot be synthesised.
And life can be found in nature.

Why is it so hard?

The music is blasting out the stereo, I am singing at the top of my lungs along to the latest Katy Perry album, I know all the words.

I am sitting in church we are having a really good discussion and I know there is a great verse I want to share but I can't quite remember it...

How come it seems so easy to get caught up in the world? Why do I spend more time listening to random pop songs then I do listening to God? I can rattle off the words to every song on the new Script album I got a few weeks ago but I can only recite a few verses from a bible I have been reading my whole life. There just seems to be something wrong here.

Do I devote more quality time to music then I do to God. I read my bible every morning but am I actually reading it? Am I soaking in the words of the bible like I soak in the lyrics of my favourite songs? I think back to my "quiet times" when I read my bible. Sure they may be quiet on the outside but my mind is racing constantly going off track, the songs I have been listening to playing in my head, listing off the assignments I have to do, considering what outfit I will wear to the party that night.

One of the few verses I know comes to my mind... Don not conform to the patterns of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. (Romans 12:2) Or as the message says don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. I feel like that is what I have done. I have conformed to this world, adjusted as to it as if its a natural thing.

That's the reason why I find it easier to sing along to all the Katy Perry songs then I do the remember the words of the bible. I have travelled so far from the path that God had set for me, become a lost orphan of this world instead of a child of God. The reason I can't spend quality time with God or hear his voice is because I have forgotten how, I have surrounded myself witht the world and that is all I know now.

So now in order to hear him clearly I must disconnect from the world, alienate myself from this culture... stick out like a sore thumb. I will become a child of God, fill my life with his word and his plans for my life. I know it won't be that simple but hopefully I may come out of this realisation with a few more encouraging verses up my sleave and a thirst for the life that god can give me and not a desire for the empty promises of the world.

So that's my question for the week... considered if not answered. I wonder what yours are?

the end.

Surrounded by a mash of bodies, on my head I feel someone's stubble, digging into my back is an elbow and I may have my hand on someone's face. The group shifts and suddenly my head is thrust into an armpit, a very smelly armpit, must be male. The pressure all around gets stronger as more and more bodies press in, the group buckles downwards and someone jumps on top. I'm yelling for people to get off but really I don't mind that I somehow ended up in the middle of a massive group hug/pile on in the middle of Noodle Box because this is one of the last memories I will have of the year 12s as a whole.

Year 12 has come to an end, well the school part has, all that's left is muck up day or "final day activities" as management has tried to rename it, for some reason its not sticking. I find myself at the end of what has been 13 years of my life and honestly I can't believe it. How did I end up here? I swear it was just yesterday I was bonding with my soon-to-be best friend on the first day of primary school over the fact that we had the same underwear. Now I have just finished my last day of year 12 classes with only exams left before I am spat out into the big wide world.

So I thought to make myself feel better I would start something new as year 12 comes to an end. This is what I am starting. This blog. I have been fighting the urge to blog for a while but I am finally giving in and will finally let everyone see just how much I over-think and over-analyse and hopefully not show them how bad I am with grammar. (Claire if you are reading this don't roll your eyes whenever you see a mistake... cut me a break we can't all have perfect grammar like you.)

I named my blog why? i ask. because really that bests sums up the purpose of this blog. To express and explore all the questions and issues I have just been dying to ask.

So be prepared for some deep, stupid and odd questions.

Until next time keep asking questions because wondering why is fun.
Em.x