Socrates must’ve been a deer Hunter…

 Socrates must’ve been a deer Hunter…

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” - Socrates

I wonder sometimes if, in reality, I don’t actually exist in two distinct places at the same time?

The place where I exist in my day to day life is… “where I am.”  And, it is “where I am” that predominates my existence.  “Where I am” is filled with immediacy, urgency, obligation, task, responsibility, work, worry, people, drama, and every other thing that can possibly suck the life out of a man.  “Where I am” is a place so filled with things that need done, and the demands of people who need me, that there is little time, none at all in fact, for thinking, reflecting, assessing, let alone examining, the life I am living.  “Where I am” is, and always will be, what it is…

But, there is another place I exist.  Or, at least another place I can exist, if and when I make time to choose it.

The other place is a place of cool, crisp, Autumn air.  A place of bold, brilliant colors, and leaves that leap silently from the tops of trees and then carpet the ground where they wait to reveal the sound of secret footfalls.  It is a place of clean, clear, blue skies, perfect sunrises, and sunsets ablaze with color beyond description.  Most of all, it is a place of time… more time than you can imagine, measure, or want to.  An untracked kind of time, completely void of the annoyance of hours and minutes, and bound instead only by “shooting light.”

This is the place I exist inwardly, and actually at all times, wherever I may find myself.  This place I call, “Where I want to be.”  “Where I want to be” is a place filled with serene subtlety, and gradual grace.  Whenever I find myself “where I want to be,” I find that I can clearly see, I can deeply breathe, I can freely think, and… I can even actually feel emotions I never allow myself to feel anywhere else.  Being fully “where I want to be,” when a cold wind blows in my face, I find my eyes filled with tears that are, in all other settings, and at all other times, subdued, restrained, muted.  Yet here, at the end of a day spent “where I want to be,” I find myself filled with an over-abundance of immeasurable and unquantifiable, life giving intangibles.  

Thus, it is from “where I want to be” that I can look back at “where I have been” (and yes, evidently there is a third place I exist…) and understand it.  Or, at least I can reconcile myself to the fact that “where I have been” has, in fact, happened.  And, from there I can choose to fold it neatly and place it somewhere in the bottom of a chest, in a dark corner of the attic of my Soul.  

For me, “where I want to be” is, and always will be, in the forests and fields of October and November, known only to those who live to pursue white-tailed deer.  And, it is in these places and at these times, I find, that I am most alive, and living a life worth living.  

Robert E. Schmutz

Kansas, USA