Midnight Forestry

Like wildflowers; you must allow yourself to grow in all the places people thought you never would.

I remember growing up and never having a care in the world, do you? Do you remember when the only reason you’d cry is because you had a scraped up knee or your parents didn’t give you something that you wanted? Do you remember when the pain wasn’t skin deep, when it was just a momentary thing you’d soon forget about? I do, and I remember when that changed.

We never think there is something wrong with us until someone points out something about us that they don’t like- or that they think is ‘weird.’ And I know the easiest solution to that, the thing that makes the most sense is just to be like everyone else and look like everyone else. But you are not everyone else, you are uniquely yourself. It’s time to take away the negative perspective of yourself you’ve allowed someone else to place on you and get back to the place you were as a child; where you were young and wild and free.

What is the difference between a rose and a wildflower? Absolutely nothing besides our perspective of which one is beautiful and worthy and worth gifting and which one is not. Think about it, at one point every single flower that we know was growing somewhere wild and free. One day someone decided to separate the flowers and make two groups; one’s that were beautiful and worth and one’s that were not. The flowers did not change, they were the same as they’d always been, someone just decided to give their opinion as to which deserved attention and which one’s didn’t. That flower is you. You have been picked apart and have allowed other people to deem you worthy or unworthy- but you haven’t changed. You are still the same, what has changed is the way you feel about yourself because of someone else.

Think of caterpillars; they live their lives eating away until they reach the stage of making a cocoon. Caterpillars can turn out to be moths or butterflies. And if I were to ask you which of the two is beautiful you would easily scoff at me and say the butterfly- but why? Are moths not equally as beautiful as butterflies? What makes them ugly? Nothing more than our perspective of them. When you really think about it moths and butterflies aren’t all that different- what is different is our reaction to them. When we see a moth we want to kill it and yet when we see a butterfly we are so happy because they’re just so pretty!

You and I are not what other people claim us to be. You are not beautiful because someone thinks you’re beautiful and you are not ugly because someone calls you ugly. You give yourself your own worth. Your beauty is already there, it is naturally there- you were born with it. There is actually no such thing as beauty and ugliness because everyone has their own perspective of what is beautiful and what is ugly. Be kind to yourself and realize that your perspective of you from the beginning was one of kindness and love. Don’t take on what someone else says about you. Often times people are so unhappy with themselves that they need to make someone else feel the same way to make themselves feel better.

It’s insane isn’t it? It feels like there are so many more things created today that should have us engaging with one another even more- yet at the same time; I’ve noticed people are so much lonelier.

What is it about these times that makes us feel so alone? Is it the technology and the fact that while it gives us more ways to connect online, we have become much more detached in person? Or is it that we are a society of people who only live to please ourselves?

I think about these things everyday. In fact, my best friend and I were at a local coffee shop just the other day and sharing how lonely we both felt. Aside from the attention of (my boyfriend) and (her husband) and (each other) we didn’t have very many close friends. Isn’t that insane? We are in NYC, a city of eight million people and among so many people; we feel lonely.

It’s important to note that being lonely doesn’t mean you don’t have people around you or people in your life. Sometimes it can just be that the specific people you want around, don’t always have the time or it can be that you aren’t connecting with people on the level you want to. Loneliness is not the absence of another humans presence, it’s an absence of the warmth and comfort of a genuine human to human connection.

What we are lacking as a society, especially here in New York City, is the warmth of human interaction. We are a sea of lonely-isolated people who don’t know how to connect with others anymore, it’s almost foreign to us to connect to another person on such an intimate level.

As my best friend and I looked around the coffee shop we noticed how there was no one conversing besides us. Everyone was sitting in a chair; eyes glued to their computer screens or to their cellphones. We were surrounded by so many people, so many bodies- and yet the place felt strangely cold.

We both agreed that our loneliness came from being surrounded by people who only connected on shallow levels. Most friends just want to talk online, not many want to meet for a coffee and sit down and have a long in depth conversation about life and what they’re going through. She mentioned how much different it was for her to be in a place where people seemed to solely care about themselves. She had previously lived in Spain where people were much more warm and welcoming; she and her friends were like one big family. This culture of isolation and coldness was a shock to her.

I looked around one last time, taking a sip of my coffee and nodded my head. I completely understood, I’d grown up surrounded by family and family friends and somehow as an adult I have found myself with a lack of both, for the most part. Even my family has become so distant and cold with one another; seeing each other once every couple of years.

We have somehow, as a people lost the very thing that makes us who we are; our ability to connect and to be loving with one another. I have made it my goal, to try to connect on a deeper level with the people already in my life and with people that I meet. It’s not always easy. At times I notice people feeling uncomfortable if I go passed the normal ‘small talk.’ But small talk isn’t really speaking, when we do that we are just going over pleasantries that we already know the answers to. They are rehearsed lines that take no thought or even emotion: ‘How was your day?’ ‘Good.’ ‘Oh, mine was good too.’