Heroes Not Zombies

In my photo library I have this image entitled “The road north”, but when I looked at that title just now I thought, “Maybe it’s also the road south”? I know why I called it “the road north” – because I took it while driving north and I stopped to take some photos of the amazing mists travelling over the surface of the hills ahead. I was mesmerised with how they moved, how some grew bigger and how some disappeared into thin air. I was fascinated by the thought – are these mists or “low cloud” and realised I didn’t really know the difference – and did it matter anyway?

But when I took this particular photo of the mists, I included the road and the little house to make it an interesting composition. I had pulled up by the side of the road to take these photos and I know I was on my way north so the title seems appropriate.

However, without that experience and memory, this road can be seen from two different directions, can’t it?

You can look at it and see it as the road ahead. You can wonder where it is leading to. You can speculate about what lies over the crest of the hill, whether the road turns sharply to the left or the right, or carries straight on for a bit yet (there aren’t many straight roads in this part of Scotland!) In other words you can orientate your thought and your attention to the future.

On the other hand, you can see it as the road just travelled. You can see it as a moment’s pause on a journey, to look back, recall and reflect. If you weren’t the one travelling along this particular road, then it’s more likely you’ll be drawn to imagine the future, than to reflect on the memories from the past…..after all, if you didn’t actually travel along this road, then you don’t have any memories of it, do you? Interestingly, you can’t say the same thing, exactly, about the future. We can all imagine the future. In fact, we humans are doing that all the time. We are always imagining what lies ahead, or around the corner, or in some distant time later in our lives. We are always imagining, even fearing, what might happen next, falling down a rabbit hole of “what ifs”.

There’s a third option of course, which is mine. I can mix them together, the memories and imaginings. I can remember the day, but discover, as I have discovered, that I don’t remember what lies beyond the little white house. But I do remember stopping to take the photo, so memory definitely colours my imagining……

….now there’s a thought – the truth is we use memory and imagination at the same time all the time. We have no imaginings without memories to influence them, and we have no memories without re-imagining them (they don’t lie in some brain drawer or filing cabinet, waiting for us to pull them out and blow off the dust – we re-create them every single time)

Story telling. We humans are storytellers par excellence, aren’t we? We tell stories to make sense of our lives and our experiences. We tell stories to know who we are and to find out who other people are. We tell stories to express our uniqueness, to appreciate the uniqueness of others and to make empathic connections with each other.

This image begs us to tell a story, don’t you think?

So, why not activate a few memories and imaginings today and see what story might emerge for you when you look at this image…..does it produce a story of a journey you once took, or does it produce a story of a journey you hope to take one day?

The choice is yours.