Walk On The Wild Side

It’s odd.  As life grows ever more bumptious, and out of control, there are fewer and fewer wild places in the world. The garden is not wild, unless it is wild with weeds, and one can’t consider garden’s wild anyway.  Daily life is driven, but it is not wild unless we are living in Syria, or sky diving, or listening to a doctor tell us we have a deathly disease.  The last undiscovered, wild places on the planet are discovered, claimed, and filled with Big Macs, the kind we eat and the kind we work on.  And despite feeling out of control, most of us are not wild.  We are crazed.  That is not wild.

There is a growing need for us to express a capricious wild side, if only to balance  the over-committed, dedicated, work-weary self.  What has happened to the lion tamer in the Zebra skin, one-piece? What of the trapeze artist, in pink tights, and sequined tutu?  We did once dream of being wild, and extra-ordinary?  Trouble is, we feel we have enough problems and challenges without being weird and possibly asking for more.  Trouble is, we have winched down and positioned ourselves for the least amount of friction.  Not a bad deployment except- trouble is, no one is laughing.

When was the last time you roared, wet your pants, and couldn’t catch your breath?  When was the last time you kicked off your heels, ripped off your sport coat, and let ‘em have it…whatever ‘it’  is, it ain’t your norm.  Our ‘norm’ is working so hard to keep us in the norm-zone that we’ve disowned parts of our whole in order to stay safe inside the norm-lines.  When this happens, we erupt volcanically, or we are confronted by strangers who do, taking us down with them.

There is a tremendous need for each of us to express, and give voice to all parts of self, hopefully moving our tight asses toward middle ground, which ain’t wild, but it knows wild.  It can feel and express wild. It can be that wild thing without fear of destroying everyone and everything around it.  Now, we’re in the middle, holding our breath, terrified of stepping outside the line, or tipping over…that’s a very different middle, however it appears.