Everything Stays

I used to spend much of my time wasting away inside of my own bedroom, and when COVID-19 hit all of us, it kept me locked up even further. I’m not certain if this portion of my life was incidental to my experiences with depression, but I am able to discern that the lack of greenery and fresh air in my days at that point was fanning an already burning flame. I was in middle school, at the time, making it difficult to articulate exactly what was happening to me. I had kept myself online for many hours, and I would always wonder why I was feeling so empty and tired. It truly wasn’t until the end of my sophomore year of high school that I began to see a bit more clearly about the effect of what I was doing on myself: I wasn’t taking a moment to slow down and appreciate how little everything truly changes in the vast perspective of time. None of the trees ever came and went with little time to reflect, all of it stayed right where we left it, even when the time came to rot. Yes, humanity has changed, but had we not been here, all would have been constant for many years, until the next ice age, apocalypse, or some drastic event.

I can recall a time during my junior year when I was feeling particularly down and flat, where I ended up in the lot of a local park that I frequently came to sit in. Usually, I would stay in my car and let it run, only using the place to sit and wait for the hours to pass while whatever I was anxiously not attending flew on without me. This day, however, I made a small decision to exit my vehicle, and sit somewhere there was actual plant life, instead of being surrounded by plastic and metal, with the greenery locked behind the walls of the car. I got out, and investigated a bush covering a good portion of the corner I usually parked in. Aside from a few trees sparsely placed around the neighboring field, and a river teeming with life bordering the park’s edge, this bush was the only thing this place had going for it, as the river had no place to sit, and the field had nothing to look at. This bush, I discovered, was completely hollow on the inside. Pushing my way through the branches, using a small opening many others seemed to have used before, I entered this dark area where I found the remnants of parties had there years ago. Cans littered the place; however, I couldn’t help but be taken aback by the small amount of comfort given to me by this serene room of sticks and leaves. I decided to sit down on the dirt, and I looked around to take it all in. The inside of the bush was dark, sure, but through the leaves came beams of light, pressing spots of warmth into my skin wherever they landed; the wind came in gently, not enough to blow my hair into my face, but not too little to become overheated with the summer air. It smelled sweet there, fresh, despite my car being nearly 10 feet away. And, for a moment, that feeling of somber haze that usually took control of me melted off. I knew I couldn’t ever have that feeling stay with me, but for once I had felt like I was really living, like my mind wasn’t trapped a week ahead of itself. No more bubble of thought surrounding me, instead, a bubble of leaves and fresh air.

After everything, I continued to my car and found myself returning to the same mindset I always had. I do not believe I realized how that experience could have affected me differently if I allowed myself to keep the peace I was given by the serenity of that bush. Instead, I remember thinking to myself that I couldn’t just sit around and enjoy, I would need to sit around and stress. I never felt for a moment that maybe time wasn’t going to go as fast as I believed it would. Now, I believe that the one thing that kept me from growing beyond these thoughts was almost a feeling of spite for myself. I felt that I wasn’t allowed to enjoy things like that beyond little moments such as the bush, simply because there wasn’t enough time to appreciate it all. The fact of the matter was, however, that this bush wasn’t going anywhere, everything stays despite all the change the world goes through every second. If I had allowed myself to believe that, instead of keeping the endless march of time first and foremost in my head, I think I could have ended up happier. I also believe that many others are affected by this exact mindset. It's never enough to simply be where beauty is, you must also recognize the longevity of it, how it’s always there waiting just for you, despite everything. We get into the ‘Make it to Friday’ funk easily, instead of taking each hour slowly, and noticing how the minutes pass on, while the flowers outside do not care about a single second that goes by. Nature, truly, is a gift to all of us, no matter what your brain may tell you. Everybody is always welcome to look outside and take note of how those trees out there don’t move, don’t change aside from the seasons that come and go, and don’t care about the clock. That bush, a sanctuary, tried to tell me this exact idea. The way the empty beer cans were strewn about, and how yet each branch clearly stayed the same, kept the same purpose, through all the changes that happened within it. It should have put some comfort in me, but I chose not to listen. It feels as if each day, the life we take for granted pleads for us all to take a moment and forget the concrete jail of our modern surroundings, and many of us turn a blind eye. The clock is ticking, ticking, ticking, no time for nature, no rest, get to the goal and get out. That exact thought haunts my every waking moment, albeit somewhat subtly, and controls my every action. I know that even if I can’t knock that out of my head, with medication or self-reflection, I can always return to the hollow sanctuary and feel that breeze, feel that light, and forget for just a moment about the ever-passing hours. I believe that if the trees were conscious, they would be shouting at us to slow down with absolute fury. It must be intense, being something like that, as everything changes so drastically around you, while you sit and absorb the light pouring out of the sky that the little beings surrounding you frequently and deliberately block out. I’m sure it would be torture to watch. I sit here now, reminiscing on that bush, realizing just how much I’ve changed since that day, and how it’s still waiting for me there, same as ever.

To quote a musical piece from my favorite TV show, Adventure Time, “Everything stays, right where you left it, everything stays, but it still changes. Ever so slightly, daily and nightly, in little ways, when everything stays.”