This is my moment of Zen. This is when and where I was truly happy for the longest I have been in my memorable life. I am selfish and want this happiness always, now that I have tasted it. So far I have had no success in keeping the feeling, but uncomprehensible success in finding it in me over and over again. I know it's always there, I just have to figure out how to see it when I really need it.

So, tonight I had a revelation. I took an exam in Calculus for which I didn't study. I failed, miserably. While walking back to my car, a little bummed because I thought I understood the material, I noticed that the grass was an amazing shade of green. The sunset was sepia, pink, and vibrant blue, and the crickets were singing a concerto just for me. I realized that in the big picture one exam didn't really matter. Yes I was going to study and try harder next time, but there was no reason to be upset over a simple test. There are so many more important things happening in the world right now. Soon after I realized this I felt a calm I haven't felt since I took this photo in July. I think I'm just starting to understand what this calm, this Zen, truly is.

I think this calm is God. Now, I need to get something straight. I am not, and never truly have been, a religious person. I have never believed in a creator. I've tried desperately to believe because I wanted something to tell me that if I did this or that I would be happy. All I really crave is happiness. But God, in the denominational sense has always been like a myth to me. I was brought up thinking that God is like Santa Claus. You believe in him because it makes you and other people happy and brings you closer together, but in the end you truly know it is a simple story. It's not true.

Now wait another second before you judge me. I have never thought anyone was wrong about their religion. I simply have never accepted religion into my own heart. I believe that when you die, you die. That's it. It's not nice to think about- but it really makes you appreciate what time you have alive.

But in the back of my mind I have always noticed little things. Little questions have popped up for which I don't have any answers. When I went to the Sistine Chapel I felt something in the air, some palpable electricity. When I sat in science class and was told that negative charges attract positive charges I wondered why. "That's just what happens." I wondered what we were made out of and then learned about cells. I wondered what they were made out of and learned about atoms. I wondered what they were made out of and learned about protons, neutrons, electrons. But I still wonder. What? Why? I fell back on science because I had no faith. But even Einstein said that the more you learn about the nature of things, the more you have to believe in a higher power. It's all to simple in its complexity to have no meaning.

I don't believe I was created by a higher power. I don't believe in God in a Christian sense. I believe in people, humanity. For a long time, when someone would ask me about my religion, this is the response I would give- until tonight.

Tonight this calm I felt, and had been feeling sporadically since my impromptu trip to California, developed into a sense of self. All of a sudden I felt important. Not because I could do something to change the world, but because I could stop and appreciate the world as it was. I stopped before getting into my car, to appreciate the sunset; the formations of the clouds, the sounds of the bugs and birds singing, the scent of the distant rain clouds. Maybe we weren't created by a God. My faith in people has led me to think, perhaps we created the concept of God itself. Through story and myth we have created every religion in the world. I've always believed this... but tonight I find myself thinking. Well fine, we created God, but that means God exists. Perhaps God is not the diety we associate the term with commonly in Christian and Jewish beliefs, or in Muslim, or Egyptian, or Buddhist. Maybe the God I feel is simply energy. That's why God is in everything and everyone. In people, God is the creative and emotional and physical energy we are so distinct for posessing. In animals, God is the drive for survival, and the peace we see in the domesticated, and the drive to keep living in the abused and neglected. In plants, God is the adaptability, the energy to devote the lifeform to search for water and light and nutrients. The struggle to stay alive is God in all life.

In the lifeless God is present. A boulder, let's say. Anyone who has ever taken a physics class can tell you that when you stand on a boulder, it is pushing back up on you to keep you in one place. It is actually exerting a force on you that is equal to your mass times the force of gravity. And it is pushing you up at the same time you are pushing down on it. Wait, wait, let me get this straight. This boulder is pushing you? This boulder just sitting there is pushing up on you? Why yes, and the force with which it is pushing is actually changing every second. Because if you are standing on the boulder and someone tosses you a camera, the boulder has to adjust how much it's pushing on you to incorporate the mass of the camera. If it pushed too little, it breaks. If it pushes too much you go flying into the air. We all know that neither of those things is very likely at all to ever happen. So this boulder is never wrong. The boulder knows how much force to counter yours with. How? God. I can say there is energy in everything, and there is. Afterall, light is energy- so colors (our interpretation of light) are God if God is energy.

The award winning novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig, delves into the topic of what God is. Pirsig equates God with "the Buddah" or the life force. I'm interpreting pretty much the same thing. Yes, I believe in evolution. Why couldn't God have had a role in it? Why couldn't it have been God, energy, that enticed certain individuals to breed with other with certain characteristics, hense leading to variations in the population which contributed to natural selection and adaptation? Survival of the fittest- couldn't it be God which inspires a desire for survival to begin with. In fact, instead of energy, couldn't God be this desire itself. Everything exhibits this desire, even that boulder which pushes back on you so you won't break through it.

I realize I'm rambling. This is my first day believing in God, you'll have to excuse me.
Yesterday I had everything figured out. I thought I had everything back together after this trip to California shifted my entire perspective on the world. All of a sudden I'm shifted again. It's hard to be rattled like this. Maybe I think too much.

Anyway. You may be surprised to know that even with this newfound conjecture about God, I'm still not happy. I was leaning away from assuming I have a chemical imbalance for a long time, hoping it was going to be a change of heart that would ultimately be my saving grace. But even after seven years of pain and finally finding grace herself, I'm hurting. I think I'll talk to my psychology professor. Afterall he is a lisenced psychologist. He may have some insight for me.

I leave you tired, confused, and broken, trying to piece myself together again. Maybe my desire to do so is my own little piece of this God I found.

I'll say, to sum myself up, that the God I mean is the "Good" in things and people.
And before bed tonight I'll be sure to listen to "God Rests in Reason" at least twice (once to listen, once to sing along).