Holocene, Forest Fires & New Paths

Apple Music introduced me to two melancholic yet soothing songs -- "Holocene," by Bon Iver, and "I Need a Forest Fire," by James Blake (coincidentally assisted by Bon Iver's Justin Vernon).

They both touch on the concept of a fresh start, and the therapeutic benefits of SPACE.

The word Holocene is Greek for "whole new." Vernon said this about his song - "The title is a metaphor for when you’re not doing well. But it’s also a song about redemption.”

And forest fires clear out dead and misplaced growth, diseases, and create healthy fertile conditions for new GROWTH.

Reviews of Blake's song use words like "longing," "drastic change," "rebirth," "transformative experience," and "a cleansing process."

Professional Forest Fires ????

If you are looking for a new path professionally (or personally), by chance or by choice, you have the opportunity to reap all the benefits of "brush clearing fires."

New cannot happen without the purging of old. Spaces of all kinds, including brain spaces, can only hold so much. Sometimes you have to lose, to gain.

To destroy, to build.

To leave, to arrive.

Zeno, known as the father of stoicism, famously suffered a ship wreck losing everything, and famously said:

“I made a prosperous voyage, when I suffered shipwreck.”

The space that loss creates can be powerfully TRANSFORMATIVE, if you allow it.

Science ??

When you relax and stop exerting so much intense all consuming energy on one pursuit, the brain's creativity is UNLOCKED. That's why we often our best ideas happen when we are in the shower or on a walk.

John Kounios and Mark Beeman, authors of The Eureka Factor -- Aha Moments, Creative Insight, and the Brain, put it this way:

"The missing ingredient needed to realize a great idea could be as simple as a little solitude and inner attentiveness to minimize the distractions that might be blocking an idea from bubbling up. After all, you can't see the stars when the sun is out."

Space and time, for the brain, is super-charging.

The Big Finish ??

If you are rethinking any paths, and spending time in deep analysis, balance this with UNthinking time.

Sure, make your pro and con lists, fill out that excel sheet, journal and research.

But also take time to do a brain dump, and clear your mind of all that clutter. You might be surprised where it leads you. You might unlock paths previously hidden, and see the forrest for the trees, and find your Holocene.

?? "I Need a Forest Fire," by James Blake ("To burn it like cedar I request another dream; I need a forest fire; I'm saved by nature; But it always forgets what I need; I hope you'll stop me before I'll build a world around me")

??"When trees are toppled either because a wind has torn them up by the roots or because the sudden blast of a twisting tornado has snapped their trunks, the farmer nurtures the shoots they leave behind, and in place of the lost trees he at once plants out seeds and cuttings; and in an instant (for as with losses, so with gains, time over rapidly and swiftly) the new growth is more luxuriant than what was lost." Hardship & Happiness, Lucius Annaeus Seneca

??:The Eureka Factor -- Aha Moments, Creative Insight, And the Brain, by John Kounios and Mark Beeman