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Why the Story of What We Do Matters |
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| We live in a Time of Great Lostness. |
The person who lives in a run-down apartment or works a thankless job, abused and despised, shouldn't be there. In the stories and songs of contemporary culture, they escape to become the wizards, kings, and heroines they were meant to be.
The person who gets four hours of sleep every night and lives on stimulants, trying to meet an impossible schedule of deadlines - should one day meet them all. After all, the hero is supposed to be able to win and be done; that's the story. The hero's journey ends.
But we are told we've just imagined the way it should be, that stories don't matter and that life isn't like that. "Grow up," people say, "and get over it."
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| The stories of our culture tell us that the person who walks out the door but can't get back home should be found. "Lost" is supposed to be a temporary condition. Modern memorials are often designed to help people find meaning and closure when many people are lost forever in a single event. Above, a young man finds and touches the name of a person lost in war at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington D.C. Photo by Peter Mackay of Campbell, ACT, Australia. |
So we remain overlooked and unrecognized. We despair of our unending struggles ever reaching conclusion. And we lose our identities as the world around us forgets them, lose our way when we're told there's no other. The alarm clock each morning marks a new day of exile from the lives we once thought we would live.
But we don't have to stay lost. The way home is known. It's our human birthright of identity as a part of the Earth.
 Left, Unposed child and his dog. Photo by Beth Twist of Sandy, OR.
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Our children remember it -- the within-nature existence where dog is a brother as well as a friend. So do many people of Indigenous cultures worldwide. Artists and hikers, scientists and poets all hear the voice of nature and feel its companionable tug on their sleeve at one time or another. They just don't always know what to do with it, or understand what it means when they do.
We can go home again. We just have to learn how. |
We can unlearn our helplessness and relearn connection. And, working together, we can restore the path that we all thought destroyed. We can rebuild expectations of what might be possible, and make the choices that should have been ours to begin with.
Imagine the impact of human reconnect to the land -- and through the land, to each other. It's the key that's been missing for centuries.
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