The geographical boundaries, the physical limitations, and the restrictions on interaction that these past twelve months have imposed have invoked a certain natural selectivity. Amid a global pandemic, we’ve watched the unfurling of a connectedness that transcends cultural nuance. We’ve experienced collectively, but endured individually, the mental and physical strain such an event has had while bearing witness to an international camaraderie that has escaped mankind thus far. The ordeal has left us in a social and emotional paradox.
We’ve been denied access to archetypal coping mechanisms under the residence of forced isolation. Our ability to express emotion has been confined to a vacuum and we’ve experienced loss without a sufficient forum to meaningfully grieve. Loss of work, property, and security. Loss of relationship, love, and faith. Loss of self, purpose, and life. And yet loss, ironically, can invite many things into one's life. The void may consume one's focus and energy but in the debris of pain and suffering, seeds of thought and feeling lay ready to sprout new hope.
As the fallout of our social incarceration tentatively waits in the wings, we are offered a glimpse of a different future. A future where fundamental alignment exists. Conflict can be put aside for common good. Communication becomes communion. Community – a common unity.
Today, we are linked constantly with more people than our hearts can hold and we're unable to action the demands of all those to whom our heart responds. We are forced to compromise. And so, on the cusp of a global re-awakening, we will have to substitute a conscious selectivity based on another sense of values – a sense of values arisen from isolation. Like beacons lighting the path to another way of living. A simplicity of living. A balance of intellectual, physical, and spiritual life. Working without pressure. Making space for significance. Freeing time for solitude and sharing. Building a closeness to nature to nourish our comprehension of the intermittency of life and the relationships we hold within it. We must ultimately relinquish our acquisitive instinct to imbue the appreciation for one another.
Seldom are we afforded such a vast period of time and space to reflect but it is in reflection we can begin fundamental growth. One can see and feel life’s scars, emerging like stars breaking through the still hour of the day’s withdrawal, as an honest map to guide us back from the cliff's edge, into the arms of salvation.
Beyond Eden is a triptych homage to loss, grief, and hope. Born of myriad steps I've taken across varying emotional terrain to recover a sense of self. Laying rest an ideology of a life that bred unfulfillment. Accepting, with humility, futile attempts to live in a 'present' that will forever be in a state of continual transition. And, forgiveness – of instinct; Where pursuits of amelioration naturally ingrained in us all, requires a unique concession for the privileged admission. Admission to something new. Something beyond.
