My sanctuary from all the noise

This blog is by Louisa Trunks and was originally posted on her blog ‘New Shiny and Old Faithful’ in December 2021. Louisa has kindly given permission for it to be posted here.

https://newshinyoldfaithful.wordpress.com/2021/12/19/my-sanctuary-from-all-the-noise/

The viral whirligig of fear is ramping up beyond sanity point again. Can you feel it? Can you bear it? I can’t: the noxious mist of it cluggs my brain, it’s tendrils curling round my heart and quickening it’s beat… a fast, low ominous beat persuading me that IT will be bad. Humans are storytellers, its what sets us apart from animals. We can weave and believe stories, and this brings bonds, culture, ‘civilisation’. It glues groups of us together behind common heros, elevates us above animalistic urges.

Most of us don’t eat each others ice cream, because we hold the story of personal property in our hearts and this prompts a protective glare of fury if we step too close to another’s cornetto. But, ownership isn’t a universal TRUTH. We don’t really own our ice cream. If you lick mine, I might plant it in your eye, but no fundamental power will shift in my favour. It will just be my personal will, stacked against yours. Even when the police come, to cart you off for your heinous crime, their power is not TRUE, there is just so much belief in the ‘power story’ of our state, that we generally succumb. We CHOOSE to live in the story of law and order because we like the narrative.

Even our story that stories are cosy, is just a story.

Stories can be weapons. Fierce and divisive. All war, torture, corruption and persecution comes from story. The best storytellers get all the cake.. that IS a fundamental TRUTH. As we grapple with the evidence that our current stories have built a human realtiy that is unsustainable, dark power-hungry sources mount their offensive, socking out more stories than anyone can handle. As the change that must comes, comes, the players are furiously trying to write themselves into the leading parts. It’s why the noise is reaching fever pitch: “The booster is the only thing that will save your loved ones”, “Omicron is fictitous”, “we must lockdown or granny will die”, “if you accept the vaccine your children will die”, “YOU must”, “THIS is”, “fear”, “Fear”, “FEAR”.

Arn’t you all exhausted from all the storytelling too? Frazzled from the bamboozlement.. that is driven by other peoples agenda?

I don’t want all the cake. I can’t, and will never know which author wrote which story, and for what purpose.

My humble little human soul likes to write its own stories, and find its own truths. Whilst the scripts are thrown accross the frontines, bolstered by self-righteousness and exploding with fear, I’m closing my front door. As I walk to the back of my house the noise dims. In my garden are my truths… love and connection. And our only indisputable truth: nature.

All around my garden are my own stories, collected carefully to curate my own narrative. There’s myriad micro-tales of humans being kind, of belly-laugh moments, and of adventure and courage. There’s stories of survival and resilience. There’s biopic after biopic of brilliant humans, that never made the mainstream storybooks. And right in the middle, nestled in an old oak tree, is PEACE. She reaches down for me and as my skin grazes the ancient rough bark, as the fresh rain washes the mist from my brain, she unhooks the tendrils of fear from my heart. She tells me that IT will be okay. The world will keep turning. Regardless of the stories humans tell, love will remain, connections will be possible, and sunsets will always be beautiful. She introduces me to Sanity, and I think that I might not go back out the front door for a long while.

We also liked her blog ‘Joy Hunting’: https://newshinyoldfaithful.wordpress.com/2020/11/14/joy-hunting/