#castlelaw

  I believe that the physical world we inhabit can quite literally shape our mental world, defining our cerebral horizons, and the way in which we understand the objects and processes we see and interact with. This physical environment naturally has boundaries. We often hear living in relative isolation being referred to as “living in a bubble”, and we understand that to mean a protected physical environment, but perhaps also a limited mental world. Sometimes, we nestle in and get comfortable inside our well-defined borders. Eventually we crave something more. We want more stimulation, and we want to do something outside of our comfort zone that will cause us to learn something new. We travel, we swim deeper in the sea so our toes can no longer feel the reassuring bottom, we pursue risk, and we wonder if what we used to think was dangerous was really, truly, danger. We break through those hedges we’ve so neatly planted in a row, along the edge of our mind garden. We cultivate new seedling ideas, and tuck them away in our intellectual cornucopia, to nourish our minds and maybe even our souls.

  The freedom to roam was, to me, slightly revolutionary. Why should the little inspirations of nature be locked away, for the sake of acting out a way of living centered on ownership? What great discoveries have we yet to make by confining ourselves to the little rooms where we work, eat, and sleep? And best of all, what else lies out there, just beyond the padlock? The capacity and potential of the human mind to create, learn, remember, and synthesize are still yet beyond the total comprehension and elucidation of science. Maybe your next breakthrough thought is just a forest walk away.