Into The Dark Ocean

i’m reeling over this essay about creating personal mythologies by Buster Benson.

He describes the personal myth as a way of looking at the dark, universal anxieties we have as humans and creating stories which serve as reminders to love, look and understand these problems. As Buster writes, the universe is a “dark forest,” and our awareness of this dark forest is our awareness of its mysteries and chilling truths. For example — we can’t stop bad things from happening, we’re all going to die, we may never have the lives we dreamed of living, etc, etc…

Mythology is about creating a sense of connection to the universe, ourselves, and thusly, creating a connection to meaning. Why is this happening? How can I make it make sense for me?

When I started to think about personal mythology, I also thought about personal symbolism — stuff that has specific meaning to us just because of how it shows up in our lives. For example, the traditional symbolism of a horse might be speed, messages, transit, freedom… but for me, horses make me sneeze and I think of my sister’s attempt at horse riding when she was a kid. Horses make me think of the forests by my hometown, trying something you’re not good at, mystery and weirdness (cause horses have this otherworldly quality to them).

Personal symbolism comes up naturally in dreams. It’s where our subconscious speaks to us through visual messages which can only be deciphered by ourselves. I have one dream I remember vividly, which also feels like it serves as the beginning of a personal myth:

I’m at Cape Horn — the most southernly point of South America. I’m standing high on a viewpoint, it’s a blue sunny day and I can see a small town. On the edge of this town by the ocean there’s a scientific research centre. Looking towards the research centre, I can see there’s an expedition of a submarine which is going down and off the edge of this most Southern point of the continent. It’s not a submarine that’s already submerged in water, but instead a vessel that starts on the land and then rolls off the edge of the rocks into the deep. Now I’m in the submarine that’s about to be submerged and I’m terrified to be this far South and going underwater — it feels like I’m heading into entirely unexplored territory with no way back. The water is icy and a deep blue and after the initial stomach-churning splash, we are moving through the water and down, down down… Looking out of these huge glass windows which panel the front of the submarine, I get an overwhelming feeling of the sublime — that experience where you are simultaneously in awe and on the edge of terror, but somehow it feels good. Swimming past us as in the distance I can see a large whale, a whale shark, a giant manta ray, everything is huge and formidable. It’s so beautiful. The terror doesn’t leave but I start to become thankful for being on the submarine, seeing these incredible, otherworldly things.

The ocean in this dream is also like the dark forest, in which it’s mysterious and potentially deadly, but also full of wonder.

Question: can we create personal mythologies that help us out of quiet times in our lives? Can we create personal mythologies around “wasted time” that turns it into something meaningful and full of connection?

An Expression of The Past

“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?

Rewilding Time

I’ve started to think about how the quietest places in the world are the most precious. When I say quiet, I mean places that don’t have a lot of residents, that aren’t built up with cities. Wild places.

Think about the Arctic or the Antarctic, or the ocean. Actually, it was this campaign to help protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in America which first got me thinking about this.

These places are precious because they’re filled with wilderness. Because the creatures and geography within them are becoming endangered. Because they run within their own time, yet the changes within them are a reflection of humanity’s time on this planet. Surely if the size of these places shrink, then the number of years before climate catastrophe shrinks, too.

WILDERNESS X SLOWNESS X TIME X HUMANITY X QUIETNESS

And what is it like to live in places either nearby or which have a similar wildness to them. Does it feel slower? Does being closer to nature make you more accepting of life’s seasons? I wonder what it’s like to live in an area like the Arctic Circle. Are people happier there?

And what about in Scotland — a country with many rural communities, such as those on the Hebrides. What is it like to live out there, or move out there from an urban area. How do we measure time with nature in Scotland? How is nature a measure of our own lives, and our time?

These questions of time and conservations have got me thinking of the phrase, “Rewilding Time.” So far I’ve found one academic article by an Associate Professor of Geography at Exeter University, Caitlin DeSilvey. I’m yet to complete reading the article but through her I also discovered a project called “Heritage Futures,” which focussed on heritage and related fields, and the ideas of conservations, uncertainty and transformation.

There was one quote on a post concerning rewilding which made me think about the question of nature, time and humanity being reflected in their quietest landscapes:

“to let go of nature would be to let go of the self that is projected everywhere around it.”

Letting go of nature is allowing it to run its course on its own terms. To stop trying to control it. To let go of time is the same thing — allowing it to run its course. This involves letting go of a projected self, too.

I’m starting to think that there is a parallel between time and nature and the way the human ego interacts with it.

Reclaiming My Time

I think a lot of us have seen the video I’m linking here. It’s US Congresswoman Maxine Waters fiercely reclaiming her time during her a questioning of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. This guy Mnuchin is giving some long-winded answer to her question, probably in order to avoid answering the question at all. And hammering him back to the question is Maxine Waters, as she reclaims her time on the House floor.

If only we could do that with other parts of our lives — like an illness which has held us up in bed for a month. Imagine just announcing “I’m reclaiming my time!” and the weeks you lost fall back into your hands.

Or maybe you’ve ended a relationship which took your life utterly off course. A quick “reclaiming my time!” spins you back to the bar where it all began, and you spend the evening dancing with your friends instead.

A lot of conversation about getting back lost time on the internet centres around social media. I like this article by Christopher Butler which suggests one remedy to that is picking up a notebook instead.

Yes, social media takes chunks out of our days, and fixing that addiction is possible. But what about those other things I mentioned — how do we reclaim time from moments or seasons of life which felt totally out of our control?