"In wildness is the preservation of the world" ... "How near to good is what is wild!" ... "Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest." -From Henry David Thoreau's essay "Walking". Thoreau wrote this essay and delivered it as a lecture multiple times in the 1850's. At the time, he was speaking specifically of our westward expansion. Throughout the history of the world we have continued to find new frontiers to explore and conquer. And in each new expansion we have found wildness to tame.

In my lifetime I have heard that 'Space is the final frontier.' I have seen and experienced varying degrees of wildness from city streets to the workplace to the classroom to the boardroom to the bayou to the rural heartland. We are domesticating disease and particles and waves and brain cells and plant genetics and the human genome and doing our best to domesticate nature. We are born to be wild and we sow our wild oats, yet we rein in excessive or harmful wild urges and we encourage our children to be good. We avoid fear and its resulting wildness by simultaneously believing in magic and striving for certainty. And in this sense 'wildness is the preservation of the world' - without it we would wither.

Not only is wildness good in that it encourages and motivates progressive forward movement, but it is intrinsically good because it serves as a reminder that our nature is of nature and in that sense, primitive. This reminder demands an Active Humility. We are not so refined that we can set ourselves 'above' nature. We cannot close the door on nature. To be civilized is an evolutionary refinement; it is not a surgical severing of our relationship with wildness.

I am most alive in the midst of wildness. At the beginning of this dance I may tend to seduce with reckless bravado but as the romance progresses I tend to enchant with sweet promises and soft whispers. No matter my methods, I cannot lose sight of my own image reflected back at me; I am of this wildness... ...and this wildness is of me - and these two points of reference are not the same thing.

I have been spat out into this circumstance, a product of tens of thousands of evolutionary years of taming the wildness of the world.

But what of the wildness within?

I have spoken of refinement and culture and a civilized world in which we enjoy a larger diversity of choice and a greater likelihood of comfort and safety than ever before.

But what of the inner peace and tranquility that comes from Goodness?

This inner frontier is still to be assimilated. This wildness within is still to be absorbed.

(And as I consider these words, I am thinking that perhaps it would benefit us to take a step back and instead of working at conquering and taming the wildness of the world, where we are still able we should instead assimilate, absorb, and concentrate its power for an interdependent good.)

To be clear: the wildness within that I refer to is as pervasive and invasive as the wildness of the world. When I say "I am of this wildness" I refer to the wildness of the world outside and beyond my purview. When I say "This wildness is of me" I refer to the wildness shared within all of us together. Just as the outer world can be seen as a whole, so too can the inner nature of humanity. Last week I pointed out that because not one individual being amongst us can be considered intrinsically absolute, and because we are each impacted by a combination of (a) personal choices, (b) the choices of other individuals, and (c) numerous other factors beyond individual control, our esoteric nature cannot possibly be exclusive to one individual being; it must be shared by all and it must be as pervasive and invasive as is all human interaction. This means that one individual's harmful wildness, in part, belongs to each and every individual being; as does one individual's compassion.

The wildness within includes untamed compassion. I propose that with awareness and practice, each and every individual being, one at a time, has the potential to assimilate and absorb that wild compassion, focusing it in a way that will ultimately create a communal inner reality, that will in turn positively impact the wildness of the world.

Henry David Thoreau also said, "Our ancestors were savages." I propose that our descendants in centuries to come will say the same of us. Yet we do not want to lose touch with the energy found in the wildness of the world or in our wildness within - "In wildness is the preservation of the world."