Prose

 A Mid life Journal Entry 

All of active life is a balancing act...between one's private and social life, between work and leisure, between solitude and maintaining bonds of friendships, between one's heart, and mind and body. 

I used to love to go to the woods around my neighborhood as a youth, and even without the companionship of a friend, I was never alone. There were the doves calling to each other, the trees whispering in the wind, the cicada or locust orchestra playing for their own enjoyment..and I was, unbeknownst to them, their audience. Without exception, the totality of all was easing. 

When alone I could walk along the wide creek, studying the nursery beds of fish in the shallow places; observe the eddies and whirls of the moderately paced currents as they came around bends, hit a sunken tree, or pushed the deep dark water into coves; I could walk through the sandy 'bottoms' and watch the tall trees sway and listen as they creak with the breeze; I could walk along cut paths, trodden paths or make my own paths; I could enjoy the cool of the low, deep woods on a summer day;  I could listen to my heart and my own thoughts at my own pace; I could breathe in life and exhale truths. All this I could also enjoy with a close friend, mind you, but not as leisurely and quietly, and therefore not as singularly, as when alone.

 

Friendships are necessary bonds -after all humans are somewhat social creatures by nature - that have their own undeniable enjoyments..contain within themselves their own truths. However, when with a friend, you can at most half-enjoy, half hear and feel yourself and the woods, for the rest is invested in your company. So are they in fact equal in value, solitude and companionship? 

Now, in middle age, with both my long-time friend and nearly all the woods gone, I am left to solitude without the woods to speak to me, without their envelope allowing for leisurely reflection and thought, and without a friend to keep company.

It is now when I leaf back through my life's pages that I am forced to ask myself: what would I have done differently? And the answer from that voice within has sternly answered each inquiry : ' I would choose to spend more time with myself and the woods. That would be the balance I would strike, so that the differences between the present nows would be one rife with inequalities -imposed from both without and within- and anxieties on one hand; and a now assured with confidences, confirmations of verities and properly balanced because of them on the other'.