Oh, how I love reading something that inspires me so much that I just have to write about it! I just read a piece written by a dear fellow-seeker friend (I believe he would be OK with me calling him that). Funnily enough in his writing he mentions the Netflix series Stranger Things which is set in the 1980’s and is something I also wrote about in a (longer, non-blog-type) piece I’m currently writing.

The other day I wrote that watching the Stranger Things-theme makes me so incredibly happy, like all the way into my very core, and I inquired into why that was. I concluded that to me, this theme so brilliantly represents both in music and graphics how the 1980’s felt for me and how different it was from today.

My friend writes:

What’s interesting about our love of Stranger Things is not the nostalgia driving it, it’s the genre we’re living in while we’re feeling that nostalgia. We are looking back on the 1980s with all the cynicism, darkness and grit of the last 30 years. We no longer live in the optimistic certainty captured in 80’s films; we’re in a gritty Noir world. (…) We are, all of us, looking for salvation in a world on the brink.

Heavy words, right? Looking for salvation in a world on the brink. But I can really relate to that! The freakin’ Amazon rainforest is on fire people, the lungs of our world. Do I need to say more? (*) If I do, let me just say Trump and that surely ought to be enough…

So what do we do? My friend writes about how he believes we need a new grand narrative to bind us together. And in order to create that, he writes:

We must find what Jordan Hall has called “The Story In Our Bones”. That place within us where we are channelling a liminal wisdom – beyond the mimicry, beyond the falseness. (…) (We need to be) living with the paradox of having our eyes open to the collapse around us, while holding onto a deep faith in the future. And that is not done with words and the intellect alone – it is done with the heart (…).

He continues:

We don’t need more knowledge, we need Wisdom – a deep, embodied, living thing. 

Thank You my friend! This really is my truth as well, that we need Wisdom. With a big W. I believe that Wisdom resides in all of us, we just have forgotten how to access it. A lot (I mean A LOT) of people in the Western world have collectively fallen asleep in their lives, that’s how I often feel (especially in the bus on my morning commute). So in a way it’s all about remembering. How to live. How to love. How to be authentic. How to be vulnerable. How to be real.

I believe, as my friend, that this is not possible without going on an adventure inside ourselves and discover whatever is there. You need guts to go on that journey though! Because this journey has a tendency to shake you to your core and turn what you believe is you completely inside out. As my friend describes it:

It will take us straight to our mortality. Into our bodies, into not-knowing, into a liminal space.

He continues:

Each of us, in our own way, needs to feel presence of the divine in our bodies and come into communion with one another through it. No half-truths, no ideological capture, no wishy-washy religious relativism, no new age platitudes that tell us “everyone has a piece of the puzzle”. Just the thing itself. Felt right now in the moment. 

The thing itself.
Felt right now in the moment.
Deep truth.
The Wisdom in our bones.

When I write this I feel its presence. And that….that gives me hope for this world on the brink. Because if I can feel it, you can feel it too. And together we can be the change that I believe this world so desperately needs. No need for grand gestures or our ego’s. Just us, living our truth.

With love ♥

*See my comment below about the Amazon fires

If you are interested you can read my friend Alexander Beiner’s article A Story to Bind Us: The Intellectual Deep Web and a New Meta-Narrative 

Alexander co-founded Rebel Wisdom, a media platform created by the conviction that we, in these times of change, can no longer trust the traditional media to make sense of the world. So Rebel Wisdom facilitates a new kind of conversation that is, how they describe, more in-depth, more open and more democratic. Sounds interesting? Check out rebelwisdom.co.uk to be inspired by interviews with for example John Cleese and Gabor Maté.

You can also listen to the Stranger Things theme-song on YouTube

Photo: Rafal Werczynski – unsplash.com

About Poolside

-Do you feel stressed, tired, burned out, numb, have difficulty to focus or feel joy?
-Is the voice of your mind running your life?
-Do your past experiences affect your daily life?
-Do you wonder if there is more to life than sleep-work-entertainment-sleep?

As of august 2019 I offer holistic counseling sessions in Swedish, English and Dutch, in person and via Skype. A holistic counseling session with me gives you space to take a break from this hectic world and be present with what is. 
Interested? Read more at:
poolside.se (in Swedish)
poolside.se/en (in English)
poolside.se/nl (in Dutch)