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Life is truly self-centered, we are truly self centered. This is a cornerstone of life, both because of life's need to preserve itself, as well as to explain why we are here and what we are to do here. We cannot absence our minds from the clutter of our wants and beliefs. Be it 'selfish' wants such as money or power, or 'unselfish' wants such as helping others, all wants are still only made by us, ascribed as important to our end goal - happiness.

This end goal can only be found by those who take to heart their beliefs and know what to look for in life. These wants may be viewed as 'good' or 'bad', but in relation to the universe these wants and these opinions are just as insignificant as us. In relation to self, what is 'good' or 'bad' is what makes one happy, our only moral rules are those that we give to ourselves, and therefore the only important thing is to stay true to ourselves and follow what makes us happy.

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Throughout life, death and the in-between, we are natures being. Created through it and from it. For an unknown purpose or for no purpose at all, we are here nonetheless. Made to last for a blink in natures reign over eternity. We are here, not taking from it, not giving to it, just changing it - being it; not for better, not for worse, all for nothing in its endless expanse of space and time.

Nature is all, not just life, not just death, not just humans, not just the Earth. Nature is the ground, the sky, the living song of the birds, and the dead silence of space. It lives through everything - through nothing - throughout time. It is not living, not caring, not affected by anything, as it is both the cause and the effect of everything. Life and the consciousness that comes with it allow us to observe our universe. Without being observed the universe would still carry on being. Our thoughts, opinions, and actions can not affect its existence.

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Throughout the year the shadows change intensity, change length, change shape in long winded patterns. Throughout the days the shadows change in faster, shorter, violent cycles of life and death; insignificant in comparison to the movements of the year, of the century, of the millennia. In turn these scopes of time are just as insignificant to a shadow's span of a day as the day seems to the millennia.

Although the shadow may know it is part of something greater, it is locked to the guidelines of its projector, and must acknowledge its place of insignificance in the world of millions of other shifting shadows. It must take to heart its circumstances of existence; look through an overcast hour or the overshadow of a larger force. And out of that, mold its own significance and dance the best it can to its own tune. We too must accept that we are largely ruled by and non-withstanding to forces out of our control. These may be the sheer facts of one’s existence that are due to nature’s laws or what we call chance, or the human institutions made to control the masses. Whatever the reasons, we are trapped by the lives we are born into, yet free to make what we can out of them.

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Just as a bird, a squirrel, or a tree, we are governed by the principles of nature, the natural laws. These principles are what have dictated everything to be as it is, and what will make everything as it will be. Though we may not fully understand these laws, their presence is evident in the interactions of objects. Such as how we may predict chemical reactions before they happen, and when something goes awry its cause can be pinpointed. Since this is the case, all things, including us, are just highly complicated arrangements of atoms acting on the stage of physics with a singular, predefined, and perhaps non-ending outcome. If time is limitless, and the dance of its inhabitants is fixed to the natural laws, existence could just be an unending, reoccurring pattern that never resets, but adds onto itself, eventually including all outcomes.

In that case, how rare yet infinitely certain is it that we are here, with our thoughts controlled by the attractions of quarks and electrons acting in set guidelines in our brains. Maybe the evidence is there, and science has surpassed  human comprehension, or we reject the truth of the simplicity of unending meaninglessness out of fear. Maybe humanity needs a reason, a definite end to match our own creation, our own mortality, as the only existence we can comprehend is the model by which we live and die. Maybe there is a creator, maybe its purpose could be simple, or unimaginable. Maybe the creator is the universe, a catalyst, the natural laws, acting with no greater reason. Maybe we will never know and will die naive to the existence that has created, will destroy, and will surpass us. What humanity will most likely never answer is what the ultimate ending is to our forever changing yet single outcome play.

If that is the case, what’s the point to life other that what we (or our quarks and electrons) give it? In a way, this idea is freeing, giving us the power to experience the hectic and confusing aspects of life with the thought in the back of our minds that this, the experience, is what we are here for. What happens in trillions of years ultimately does not concern us, as none of us will be here in even 150 years. So, the only thing that we need to focus is the immediacy of our own life and the meaning we give it.

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Through the years I have hiked Kennesaw Mountain hundreds of times. Each time I notice something new, something I never thought to study before. Be it a spider web glistening in the dew of an early morning, or the miniature forests of moss that cling to the face of grey stone outcroppings. I find myself stopping in amazement. When the sun reflects off the web’s dripping beads, and I notice the intricacy of the moss on the stone next to me, I feel truly connected to the world.

Away from people, away from worries, away to the West side of Little Kennesaw. I cross the road from my grandmothers’ house and follow the winding and untamed deer trail that leads into the roots of the mountain. After the first 50 yards I stop seeing trash that was thrown from the road, and after a mental note to pick up someone else’s carelessness on my return, I continue my aimless adventure. Each time I enter this forest I make an effort to take a different path from last time, so I step off the deer trail and head slightly Northeast up the mountainside. I observe the undergrowth has only begun to change color, even though it is late October, and we should have already had our first freeze by now. A few hundred yards up the slope the scene lets way to larger boulders and a change to outcroppings, divided by widely spaced trees, and underpinned by denser and lower foliage. This is where the erosion is the heaviest, and where I pay attention to my feet the most. Not only to keep them beneath me, but to see what treasures I can spot.

This time I see a mine ball on a pillar of dirt in a washout, I picture the battle that took place here, and put myself standing there, in that long-ago era, in a young man’s shoes. I imagine that bullet striking the rock to my left and rolling off into the leaves. And thinking of how that young man would never have thought to wonder about who would find that bullet in 150 years, only how he just narrowly

escaped death I leave the bullet and continue up the mountain, thinking if anyone will happen across it once I’m long gone as well. Still heading Northeast, I scramble up the right side of an especially large outcropping, and across the face of it to the old fallen hickory tree. Between its Aged, brittle branches, I sit with a vantage point that offers a view of the surrounding 15 miles. I’m amazed at how 20 minutes can change your perspective on the same scene, and how 20 minutes can leave you with such wonder.

Heading along the same elevation I make my way to a protrusion of rock that acts as a cave the size of a large truck. Here is where I once found a broken arrowhead, and where It disappeared in the next rain. On the other side of the cave there lays the remains of confederate earthworks, and Inside the cave someone has stuffed a water bottle into a crevice. I peer over the ledge forming the front wall of the cave, and look out over the same horizon that I know all those people gazed at as well, and wondered if any of them wondered of those before them, or of those who would come after them, just as I did. Glimpses like this into the history of a single 20ft by 20ft plot of land are unique. It’s as if a realization clicks in your mind that history is more than just in textbooks, and how much there has been before you, and how much there will be after you.

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We find triumph over the conquest of nature. We search for the truth of life, what will make us truly happy, what will make us feel fulfilled when we are on our death beds. Our technology, our institutions, the ideas we as a species debate, all seem to be advancements. But is distancing ourselves from nature advancing us towards the truth we seek or towards a truth that is not our own? We must search for our answers. And as in any search, along with normally viewing one’s options, one must also look past the obvious, the mainstream, and the normal. To find what truly makes us happy we must contemplate what the world means to us. We must block out the noise and confusion that have come with our technology, our institutions, and the blast of others' ideas. We must take lessons from nature and go to a place in our minds that is void of these vices to intellectual freedom. We must become a duck.

A duck goes day to day, worrying about nothing except its physical needs, and then spends the rest of its life in mental reflection, left to do what makes it happy without having to hear the other duck’s opinions. Once you can worry about only what makes you happy, you are freed to be happy. Once all other inputs are silenced you are able to process your own coding. The point of pondering is not to express, but to reflect, not to act, but to do. Unlike the duck, many of us never have had a chance to fully ponder, to take in, to love the world and decide what it means to us. Many of us have never imagined just pondering, and are instead caught up in keeping up with others' opinions, others' drama, others' lives. Maybe what will make you truly happy isn’t based on how others will view you, or what others find fun. Maybe it’s the woods, or the feeling of joy while among the relics of bygone eras during your lunch break between your 12:00 and 1:00 museum tours. If you can use the simplicity of nature to reduce your philosophical quandaries to the absurd, you will be able to find your own truth.