Eszter's Weekly Elephant: Issue #10
Welcome to the tenth issue of Eszter’s Weekly Elephant! We hope your week has been pleasant so far! Let's dive into this week's topics.
This week, thanks to some unfathomable algorithmic whim, I stumbled upon a poem by David Wagoner titled "Lost." For those who, like me, were previously unaware of this poem, I've copied it here.
Lost
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.—David Wagoner
(1999)
These few lines had a profound impact on me. Throughout my life, there have been numerous occasions when I found myself unsure of which direction to proceed and felt somewhat lost, either overwhelmed by too many options or feeling stuck without a single viable path forward.
For me, the most challenging part during these times is to wait until my heart somehow senses the right direction to move forward. This "lost state" can often last for days, and in certain aspects of life, even weeks or months. For instance, it's possible for one's career to be progressing smoothly, while their romantic relationship feels stagnant, neither moving forward nor backward, gradually draining their vitality. This was precisely my situation in my mid-twenties.
The waiting is excruciatingly nerve-wracking, and every day you wake up hoping that today might bring some change, only to go to bed disappointed that nothing significant has shifted. The wiser ones among us always say to rest and enjoy these periods as much as possible, for when things start moving, there won't be time to catch a breath. While this sounds like sound advice, it's hard to enjoy life when each day ends in disillusionment because situations that aren't going well, or are stuck, have not progressed at all. Most of us are more likely to be anxious.
In my opinion, this anxiety does not stem from the fear that things will never change. Being rational beings, we are well aware that neither good nor bad times last forever; everything changes eventually. Therefore, our fear is not that we'll be stuck in an undesired situation for the rest of our lives. I believe the anxiety comes more from a feeling of missing out, of being left behind, of being forgotten. It's as if we've fallen off the track of life, sitting on the sidelines watching the game – the game that is our life, yet somehow we're not participating in it. It's this fear of missing out, of lagging behind, that drives us to actions: useless phone calls, forced trials of manifestations, desperate internet searches, consultations with fortune tellers, listening for friends' advice in vain in a desperate attempt to move the stubbornly stuck situations forward. But then, nothing seems to work or yield results.
And so, we struggle until we're drained, feeling immobilized in the marsh of stagnation, our vision obscured by the smoky haze of hope burnt away by our futile attempts. At that moment, we harbor the delusion that life has so forgotten us, we've become so out of touch with everything, that the only thing left to happen is for a similarly situated wanderer to find our bleached bones in the marsh, decades later.
The poem I mentioned found me at such a moment, when I was questioning who I am and why I'm wearing out my feet on this planet.
The only certainty was my family. I realized this isn't about depression, hopelessness, or despair because things didn't turn out as hoped. Rather, it's about a profound transformation during which one questions everything they believe about themselves, stripping away, one by one, the indoctrinated or self-hypnotized images they've held of who they are. During such transformations, an inevitable point arrives when one stands bare, having shed many layers that proved false, yet still not feeling, not knowing where to go next. Often, it feels like we've been sitting on the sidelines for too long, forgotten. It was precisely then that this poem reached me and restored the hope, the feeling, that I'm not missing out on anything, that everything happens exactly how and when it's supposed to.
“Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.”
This poem restored the feeling that I am part of something greater, for how could I be outside of life as long as I myself live and breathe? How could I be a separate entity within a system where we all breathe together, drawing the same air? No living being can step outside of life, and everyone has their place within it. If I'm not missing out on anything, if I haven't been forgotten, then I don't have to struggle to escape from being forgotten. Then I can stop, listen, rest, and maybe that's all I need to do right now. To be present and in the present, to observe.
The final sentence of the quote below also assures me that I can always return to this place, to the center, to the present, and here I will always find tranquility and, sooner or later, guidance. This is a wonderful feeling, as if stepping out of time, where all urgency and nervousness about needing to act, progress, or develop fades away.
“The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.”
Reading the following lines, one realizes that they are only truly lost when they become incapable of seeing the things around them. When they are on autopilot to such an extent that they no longer see the beauty, no longer perceive the uniqueness of each branch, bird, flower, cloud. And then they are indeed lost, for they lose the real connection with the world and, through it, with themselves as well.
“No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost.”
And if we notice that we are no longer able to truly connect with the world, to really see and perceive what is happening around us, then it's time to stop. When I read these lines, I realized that this is exactly what I had done. When I felt that I had accumulated so many expectations, so many attributes, so many principles, so many rigid ideas, that the armor I had built around myself prevented me from seeing the world, from simply connecting with it, I stopped. I stopped to shed my feelings about the past and my intentions for the future. I let go of my dissatisfaction with myself and my performance, along with the uncertainty about what I will become in five years.
When I finally cast off this heavy armor, I once again felt the wind on my skin, felt my chest freely rise and fall without the immense weight that had been upon it. I understood that my only task now is to observe and connect.
“Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.”
I've realized that when the time comes, I will precisely know where to go, what to do, who to be, because in this vast system, each of us has our place, our role. Nobody is ever forgotten, and everyone finds the path that fate has laid out for them.
I can't claim that I'll never unconsciously start to rebuild the armor I've just shed. It's possible that over time I might make this mistake again, but I'm sure that from now on, I'll notice sooner if my own expectations, my own ideas, my hopelessness, dissatisfaction, and uncertainty start to constrict me again. And now, having found it, I know I can always pull out this poem to remind me what to do in such times.
I hope you'll like this poem as much as it has grown close to my heart in a few days and that it will help those going through a similar period in their lives as much as it helped me!
Now let's move on to our topics for this week!
This week, we continued the topic of energy vampires with an article dealing with the ancient, coded signaling systems within us that modern energy vampires can easily exploit, often doing so either consciously or instinctively. It's worthwhile to know what happens when someone wears revealing clothing or talks loudly on the phone in a restaurant audible to everyone, and also how we can defend ourselves in such situations.
For those who want a fuller picture of why we succumb to the aggressiveness of energy vampires and let ourselves be drained often, or who want to know the most effective methods for recharging our life energy reserves, it would be worth reading the following two previous posts as well:
Another post appearing this week is a personal reflection on the times when my entire life turned upside down within a short interval, and I only managed to get through that period by burying many of my feelings deep inside. Such solutions are never sustainable in the long run, so I also had to revisit my twenty-something self, who at that time was doing everything in her power to stay afloat. You can read about how this “meeting” went in the essay titled “Memories."
Thank you!
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Brilliant stuff. Adored the poem, as well as your thoughts about being part of something greater. Keep up the great work!