On living in the wilds & week 13 of 52

What has life given you this week?

“What did the tree learn from the earth to be able to talk with the sky?” -Pablo Neruda

I usually walk my dogs at 4:30 a.m., before most lifeforms have stirred. But Sunday, I woke up “late,” at 6:30, and when we walked, everything was up—deer, bunnies, cats … it was intense.

I live in a mostly blue-collar suburban neighborhood near a beautiful little park, and I see the neighborhood wildlife more often than my retired or always-working neighbors. It’s a lovely place for a person who can easily get lost in thought and story, and it’s a reprieve from my busy job on campus.

During my walk, I looked up at a chittering squirrel, and he peeked his head out at me and made a “cheep” sound. He ran behind the trunk, peeked out from the other side (only his head), and said, “Cheep!” a little more insistently. This continued for a while.

Now, chances were, this was his version of “Get off my lawn!” but I found it adorable.

For all its oddity and competitiveness, nature always feels like a peaceful place to land, a part of a larger pattern. Even when I’m watching a murder of crows scream at a hawk (likely for eating its baby like an omelet, but I never know the full story), something is awe-inspiring about nature’s rhythms and wisdom.

The writer’s task is to see people this way. We are wise, rhythmic, and awe-inspiring, too, right? Or are we?

In the last week, I wrote a multi-part case study on leadership. I want it to be The Great Gatsby of case studies. Unfortunately, Maxwell Perkins is not awaiting my draft, but I’m learning from the process nonetheless.

To write a complex case study, which students will use to explore concepts and hopefully learn some new way of thinking critically about the human condition through the lens of leadership, is not to write fine literature. This is not a literature class so I can only sneak in so much nuance, backstory, and philosophical meandering.

A case study is a choose-your-own-adventure story based on a real or more-real-than-real scenario in which students add personal experience and (hopefully) make quick assertions that they’ll later (if everything goes right) question. But what I’ve learned in the process is the art of exploring everyday scenes we truly live—humans in the wilds of life. No frills or romanticism. Just the choice points, and how awe-inspiring they can be.

To think about all the ordinary choices we make and questions we grapple with in our real lives can seem inconsequential, but they never are. Why not reframe these scenes and search for the awe-inspiring? Write our everyday (ordinary, boring, real-world stuff) and see within the seemingly mundane our part in the pattern—in the wilds of life.

AYTL/Writing prompt:

a.) Write a journey story using whatever happens this week (à la journaling), allowing space for the smallest inconvenience to act as our adversary.

b.) Pick an everyday scene you captured and rewrite this scene in the third person, as the one looking in with pure awe.

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