I’m Not a Car

"The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy is to go outside,

 somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God.  

Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and

 that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature."

It's not that remarkable a statement.  What makes it so remarkable, and poignant, is knowing whose words they are:  They are words from The Diary of Anne Frank.  They are the words of a teenage girl who would never be able to go freely outside again, her Jewish family having hidden themselves behind an upstairs wall in a neighbor's house so that the Nazi's would not arrest, imprison, and execute them.

The family chose to try to escape death by imprisoning themselves -- by forcing themselves to never go outside.  Anne Frank's diary entry, however, expressed how deadly it was to the human spirit not to be able to go outdoors.  No -- that's not quite what she has done.  She has not expressed it in negative terms but in positive terms!  Her words are not a lament but instead a celebration of the wonderful benefits that can result from going outside.

Unfortunately, many U.S. cities today are not as congenial to the restoration of the spirit Frank describes as they might be.  (The twentieth-century author Albert Camus once complained that he would feel at home in the city if he were a car.)  Some cities are trying to make improvements, however, under pressure from joggers, walkers, bikers, and people with dogs, which rejoice even more in the word "out."

outside Franks' hiding place today

But what will I find when I do go out?  What will I do, and see, and think about as I take a walk? Will my mind still be chewing on the worries I had indoors?  Will I be focused just on the concrete and cars, or will I take time to look about and see a bush blooming or a bird flying up into a tree?

Will simply taking a walk be sufficient to cure what ails me?  Will a walk be enough to enrich me?  Or do I maybe need to find a place where I can quietly sit in order, as Anne Frank says, to be "quite alone with the heavens, nature and God... amidst the simple beauty of nature"?

Yes, we do need an awareness of Nature for our spirits to be fully enriched.  Because, as the environmentalist Bill McKibben observed:

"We live, all of a sudden, in an Astroturf world, 

and though an Astroturf world may have a God, 

he can’t speak through the grass, 

or even be silent through it and let us hear."

~~~

Do you have a favorite place to be outside?  What is it like?

(The Frank quotation is from  The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank, © 1972.)

(The McKibben quotation is from The End of Nature, by Bill McKibben, © 1989.)
(The second photograph is used under a GNU Free Documentation License.)