Get Outside
If you can’t decide what you want to do
If you can’t stand what people say to you
If you can’t see when your eyes are open wide
If you ask yourself what your doing and there’s no reply
Get outside
— Robert Palmer, Get Outside
Sometimes you reach the end of the day and you don’t know what you’ve done with it. You check the boxes, have the conversations, do the work… and everything seems off anyway. These are days to get outside and feel the world.
Yesterday, after entirely too much madness in my life, I walked outside to seek answers in the blooming lilacs. Like so many flowering woody plants their blooms are here today, gone tomorrow. Yet their fragrance is one of the most familiar of all. They make their mark on the world and recede from the scene as summer heat approaches.
I want to tell them not to go. Stick around a bit longer. But of course this isn’t the way the world works. The lilacs remind us not to blink. It’s now or never, friend. Get outside and linger with them before your opportunity is gone. How many more lilac seasons do we have left in us anyway? We throw out our days as if our account is unlimited.
Why do we spend so much of our time indoors when the world whispers to us in this way? We ought to be more present with the larger world. We ought to embrace the changes that wash over us whether we want to pay attention or not.
The lilacs will surely return again next year—but will we be here to enjoy them? To every thing there is a season. The future is a fool’s game. Our moment is now. Get outside and find it.
