“Reintroduction is explicitly framed as a ‘return’ to a point along a prior temporal trajectory, rather than an expression of the past in the present, with unpredictable future effects.”
What happens to our lives when we’ve lost parts of them to illness or some other force we can’t control? Often there’s a narrative of “returning to our old selves.”
When I was sick with undiagnosed hypothyroidism I was often told I wasn’t like my “usual self,” and once I had got the diagnosis it was all just a case of waiting until I returned to my “old self.”
I resented this “old self” so much. I knew I could never return to her, and that made me worry about disappointing the people around me.
I like the quote above from Caitlin DeSilvey’s essay on Rewilding Time. That excerpt was actually about the reintroduction of Ibex to an area in Portugal, but it could also be applied to our lives. What if we stopped trying to return to our old selves after periods of wasted time, but found ways to express parts of our past in our present, creating wild possibilities for new futures?