Out of the dark forest

It’s been at least five years of questing in the dark forest; a protracted cocoon chapter of dissolution and descent. I didn’t choose to do this—not at first. But familial and ecological grief coupled with the metacrisis ‘insight-cascade’ finally caught up with me.

I had intellectually processed this—or so I thought. But this merely suppressed the sorrow, and all the feels. Plus the blursed question from my book How to Lead a Quest—namely: “is this meaningful progress? or are we perpetuating a rich delusion of progress?”—has had me realise that much of our shared trajectory is a delusion of progress. A default that will lead us to mutually assured destruction (or at the very least: a future quite grim). And so I stepped through the window of disenchantment, venturing beyond hope, and opening myself to poetry, myth, magic, and more.

And it worked! Eventually.

I would not wish this on anyone (or would I?), but I can’t help but feel that the past half-decade was absolutely necessary.

And so now I am wending my way back towards myself.