Text: Ellen Wild
We live in a different world than a few hundred year ago. Different society, different expectations, different opportunities and challenges. In many ways the world has expanded for us. Instead of only local problems, we are now bombarded with the problems of the entire world. And if we cared to travel there? Everything is just a plane flight away.
However, there is much that has stayed the same. The wheel of day and night has kept turning. As the seconds hand on a clock, always in the wake of the moon. Ever turning around the sun. The summers are still light, just as the winters are ever so long and dark. Back in the day, they didn't have Vitamin D supplements. Neither did they have short winter-escapes to the south.
Today, sunny beaches are a perfect opportunity, smiling at us through Instagram. Like oranges from Spain, always present in even the northernmost supermarket. What they also didn't have, in that murky past, was a society where you have to perform on a straight line, ignoring the rhythm built into our body. The same productivity, regardless of light or dark. The same workhours, regardless of the moon. School even expects you to do your maximum performance at the exams, perfectly placed in the darkest time of the year.
Today, we are expected to have it all and do it all. Creating a perfectly shining outer shell, while forgetting that we are dying inside. But, it’s not until you are lost, that you really can learn what home means to you. Today, we are experiencing bigger and bigger contrasts. Reflected in body, mind and worldview.
We are growing in our relationship to it all. What is your relation with the world? What is your relation with your mind? Do you see how it links back, deep into your body? The ever complexity of life, of participation to this society, doesn't have to be a bad thing. We live in a bigger contrast, a bigger stretch of our body and mind. Testing our elasticity.
Today, we are learning what our boundaries are. We are learning how to interact with each other and ultimately with ourself. If we wanted to, we could run away from it all, leave society behind and live slow ‘like before’. Oh, did I wanted to do that! Deep inside, in that forgotten place, we all want the same. A deep and honest relationship, where we don’t have to hide or strain or fake. With ourselves, with each other and with the world.
By playing around in the contrasts of today, we are learning to go deeper within ourselves too. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to use our boundaries as a way of creating a healthier society?The painful truth is that, to heal our relationship to our society and the world, we really do have to interact with it. No one overcame their fear of heights by moving to a place where there are no mountains.
After all, everything is just an experience. Something I gladly tell myself on the hard days. Something I learn to tell myself more and more on the good days too. So, learn, play, explore! Go for those consequences! Remember where you came from. The ways of the old days, are an anchor to your ship. We can use it as a tool, always there to come back to if we’re spinning too far away.