I was trying to remember how this word "zugunruhe" got into my head, and then I remembered Annie Dillard. She called it "the great restlessness". She had been watching the animals begin their journeys of autumn migration, she had contemplated places to go, spaces to move towards and through, but ultimately she had said to the animals, "I'm staying here. You all go on, I'm staying here."
I guess another side of a certain coin relates to this sort of dynamic of staying put. But I wonder, is it always only necessarily about a certain amount of time spent within a certain designated space? Thoman Mann wrote that "time... is water from the river Lethe", and if we're to accommodate mythology with a belief that Lethe was the river of oblivion, we might be wary of things like staying put because it might be that we start to get a bit complacent with our observations, for instance as we tend towards things like comfortable routines or feeling like we're getting an understanding of the world within which we're supposedly integrating?
But, as Mann continued to write, "alien air is a similar drink". So what are we to do, or am I just reading this all wrong?... We might think of time and space as two aspects of the ways we move through our lives, yet the ways do not always need to be physically spacial, and movement does not always have to take place across a certain space of time. Can we stay put within our missions and visions, goals and intentions even as we wander across the time and space of this sensed world? From this perspective, staying put would be to allow ourselves a freedom of limits. Strategy isn't only about what you do, it's also about what you don't do... Beyond all the fancy words, it's our love, faith and calmness of acceptance of life and our role in life that might frame time and space.
My zugunruhe may not be about physical journeying, getting on the airplane and displacing myself to some otherness; it may be my restlessness to hold tight, hold true, to a perspective, a reason, a framework, a belief, a faith, some basics of action that guide me into the unknown today, tomorrow and any day just like any other day.
I guess another side of a certain coin relates to this sort of dynamic of staying put. But I wonder, is it always only necessarily about a certain amount of time spent within a certain designated space? Thoman Mann wrote that "time... is water from the river Lethe", and if we're to accommodate mythology with a belief that Lethe was the river of oblivion, we might be wary of things like staying put because it might be that we start to get a bit complacent with our observations, for instance as we tend towards things like comfortable routines or feeling like we're getting an understanding of the world within which we're supposedly integrating?
But, as Mann continued to write, "alien air is a similar drink". So what are we to do, or am I just reading this all wrong?... We might think of time and space as two aspects of the ways we move through our lives, yet the ways do not always need to be physically spacial, and movement does not always have to take place across a certain space of time. Can we stay put within our missions and visions, goals and intentions even as we wander across the time and space of this sensed world? From this perspective, staying put would be to allow ourselves a freedom of limits. Strategy isn't only about what you do, it's also about what you don't do... Beyond all the fancy words, it's our love, faith and calmness of acceptance of life and our role in life that might frame time and space.
My zugunruhe may not be about physical journeying, getting on the airplane and displacing myself to some otherness; it may be my restlessness to hold tight, hold true, to a perspective, a reason, a framework, a belief, a faith, some basics of action that guide me into the unknown today, tomorrow and any day just like any other day.
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