Jørgen, this is a remarkably intelligent piece of writing.
What struck me most when reading your text was that I don’t think it is really about death.
It begins with death, birth, leaves, raindrops and swords, but somewhere along the way another question emerges: “What exactly remains when all the familiar forms have fallen away?” And that is a very mature question.
The text appears to ask when life begins and ends, but beneath that I sense a deeper inquiry. Not whether you are alive or dead, but whether there is something in you that exists independently of the identities, roles and stories through which you have travelled. Something that most people will build their identity on.
The leaf, the raindrop and the sword all seem to circle around the same mystery: Continuity through transformation.
And then suddenly the text becomes personal, when you write about splinters, job interviews, about people seeing fragments rather than a person, about being replaced, about being tolerated rather than welcomed and about being ghosted.
The philosophical reflection gives way to something more intimate: The experience of not being recognised as a whole human being. That is a particular kind of loneliness. And it is also something I can personally relate to. It is not the loneliness of being alone, but the loneliness of being misperceived. People who naturally see depth in others often suffer greatly when others relate to them through categories, labels and surface observations.
Yet while reading, another possibility kept returning to me: Perhaps the story is not merely about rejection. Perhaps it is also about metamorphosis. The image of the butterfly appears near the beginning of your text, but then quietly disappears again. I think it deserves to stay. Because there is something curious about metamorphosis. If we could ask the caterpillar what is happening halfway through the process, it would probably describe its situation as catastrophe. Its old idenity is being dissolved in a kind of biological soup. Its former way of moving no longer works. The structures that once defined it are breaking down. From the caterpillar’s perspective, it might look very much like death. And it is a wrestle for the butterfly to get out of the shell. Only later does it become apparent that what looked like destruction was actually transformation.
I have often wondered whether many of the deepest human crises are misunderstood because we view them from the perspective of the caterpillar rather than the butterfly.
What if there are periods in life when the old self genuinely has to fall apart?
Not because it failed. Not because it was worthless. But because it has completed its purpose.
When reading your text, I could not help thinking about those traditions that describe a stage of profound disorientation before a deeper integration emerges. The Christian mystics called it the Dark Night of the Soul, and this happens to be the title of my coming book. I have thought about this subject for years, and I am living it. In alchemy it is called Nigredo, the blackening.
In Kabbalah we might speak of a descent into concealment before a higher revelation.
Different languages and systems, perhaps pointing toward the same territory, that from within such a process, life often appears fragmented.
The old narrative stops making sense. The pieces no longer fit together. The continuity that once felt obvious becomes difficult to perceive. The window shatters. The map becomes unreadable. And yet, from another perspective, something else may be happening.
The fragmentation itself may be exposing an identity that was previously hidden beneath the roles.
Reading your text, I found myself wondering whether you have spent much of your life identifying with the various forms you inhabited: Employee, Consultant, Entrepreneur, Outsider, Insider, Accepted, Rejected, Valued, Discarded.
But what if all of those were merely temporary expressions or transitional states?
What if the process is gradually stripping them away, not to leave you with less, but to reveal something more fundamental?
There is a subtle idea in Kabbalah that comes to mind.
The vessels shattered.
The Light did not.
The fragments scattered.
The Light remained.
When I read your reflections about splinters, I wondered whether you may be identifying yourself with the shattered vessel.
The broken glass. The discarded fragment. The rusty sword.
But what if those are not what you really are?
What if they are merely the forms through which something deeper has travelled?
The fascinating thing is that your own metaphors already point in that direction.
You grant continuity to almost everything.
The leaf existed before it unfolded. The raindrop existed before it fell. The sword existed before it was forged and continues after it rusts. You recognise that forms change while something persists. Yet when the subject becomes yourself, you become less generous.
The leaf receives continuity. The sword receives continuity. The raindrop receives continuity.
But Jørgen becomes a pile of disconnected splinters.
I am not convinced :-)
In fact, I suspect your own text quietly argues against that conclusion.
You describe yourself as a leaf. Yet a leaf is never merely a leaf. It is an expression of the tree. The tree is an expression of the forest. The forest is an expression of something larger still.
Likewise, a raindrop is not separate from the ocean. It is the ocean temporarily appearing as a drop.
Perhaps the deepest question is not whether the leaf survives.
Perhaps it is whether the leaf was ever separate from the tree in the first place.
And perhaps the same question applies to us.
From the perspective of ordinary consciousness, life often appears to be the story of a separate individual trying to hold itself together.
From the perspective of higher consciousness, life begins to look more like a process through which something larger expresses itself through a temporary form.
The form changes.
The essence remains.
The identities come and go.
The witness remains.
The masks change.
The awareness behind them remains.
If that is true, then perhaps the splinters are not evidence that you have been broken. And even a piece of holographic splinter contains the full image.
Perhaps they are also evidence that something in you has outgrown the frame that once held them together.
And perhaps what feels like disappearance is not disappearance at all.
Perhaps it is the uncomfortable, often painful process through which a person gradually discovers that he was never merely the leaf, the sword, the raindrop or the window.
Thanks – writing intelligently is always my aim. Sometimes I succeed a bit. When noticed, that inspires me to do more of it :)
This text was a sandwich-work: meaning that first, I was sad to receive a rejection on a job application on which I had actually had an interview – then I went to the park to sit on a bench and reflect a bit, and I couldn't resist writing down some of my thoughts – and then I went home, deciding to put the abstracted thoughts into a bigger frame and publish it, so the remaining part of the text was written as that – a comprehensible frame, or holder, for the thoughts.
The whole thing arose from sadness, but also from a sense of realism: without getting a job now, I will very soon have to go to the park to stay. Bringing my sleeping bag, hoping not to be put on fire by robots in kill-mode.
Throughout known history, philosophers have had the luxury of being able to philosophize without fearing that it would be their end. They mostly had a life situation that would allow them to spend time on it, making all thoughts of the essence of humanity and survival a truly philosophical exercise – not so often connected to the real world. Not having a need to plan for a situation that would bring them something to eat, for instance.
Now, for some of us, there is that connection. Hence, the need to reach out to both worlds – that of metaphors, and that of life as experienced.
The sadness, btw., being amplified by the fact that this was a simple job for which I was truly qualified – I would be able to do this, via the sum of several fragments of my life experience, even though not all of them would be in play, but these people were unable to see that. And, I felt that it was half my own fault: I have come to a point where it is no longer just the world that sees me as broken – now I am. Now all the pieces have fallen out the frame that they have been kicking at for so long, so I can't even manage to look like if I'm an attractive choice for a job that I could do better than many others. And I am beginning to wonder if I even can do anything – or if they are right in their verdict, that I am trash that should just be wiped out.
With the background out of the way – thanks for your brilliant thoughts :)
I like the idea of moving through different shapes, and I think it is how it goes for most of us. I think that it is fair to claim that some stop along the way, trying to stick to a certain form forever, until they have to give up. It usually appears to them too late, that the life they believed in, the level in society they thought they were at, was just for a while – that now they lose their job, most often just before pension age, for some evil reason, and everything falls apart for them, leaving them with a life that is without dignity, for the many years that typically passes until they can see the end.
Some people are better off, but society does have a tendency to kill people socially long before their physical end is near.
In a different perspective – looking at the inner journey – yes, certainly. Some of us move and develop, and we do not necessarily fit into the old frame forever. Leaving that one, maybe several times through life, may be necessary in order to grow – or transform, as we are not necessarily becoming bigger, just moving to a different viewpoint.
Looking at life as a whole as one such form is of course more advanced. It is comforting, because it means that we both haven't been as miserable always, and also will not continue that way. The idea of a pleasant Heaven waiting for us can make us accept a bad current situation; a kind of thinking that religion in general has benefited from.
Without religion, it is still possible to imagine that soul, that isn't mind or flesh, being existent. That one that can look at the pile of splinters, in my example. It is not the soul looking at the soul – it is something looking at something else. The ability for us to see ourselves from the outside speaks about a possibly more advanced construction than just the chemical brain processes in a physical body.
Being the life rather than what is alive, makes sense then. And, no matter what else we may of may not decide to believe in, we can at least focus on being that life in the time frame we can see – i.e., until our current holster dies, physically.
There are several things in your reply that resonate deeply with me.
First of all, I think your tribe exists.
The challenge is that it is not geographically concentrated. It is scattered across countries, professions, ages and backgrounds. Some of the people I have felt most at home with have been encountered almost by accident, often after years of searching in the wrong places.
The difficulty is that finding your tribe is not like finding a village. It is more like finding stars in a night sky. They are separated by enormous distances, yet somehow belong to the same constellation.
I also think you are right that many people feel they are drifting away from the flock. The difference is that most never stop long enough to reflect on it. They distract themselves, adapt, compromise, or simply become busy. You and I seem to have a tendency to stop and examine the process itself.
Over the years I have attended many informal as well as formal gatherings, conferences and events with tribemembers. Sometimes as a participant, sometimes as a speaker. I have spoken about morality, critical thinking, natural law, consciousness and society itself. One thing I have noticed repeatedly is the amount of fear that exists beneath the surface. Fear of exclusion. Fear of failure. Fear of losing status. Fear of losing income. Fear of not belonging.
So when you describe the anxiety of not knowing how the bills will be paid, I understand that, and I can relate to it personally. That is not a philosophical problem. That is a real problem.
At the same time, I think society has become strangely one-dimensional.
We measure people almost exclusively on a success-failure axis. Income. Position. Career. Recognition. Visibility.
Yet I have met countless people who score highly on that scale and feel completely empty inside. They have achieved what society told them to achieve and discovered that the prize was hollow.
Conversely, I have met people who would be classified as failures by society’s standards, yet who possess depth, integrity, wisdom and meaning far beyond many of the so-called successes.
There is another axis that society rarely measures. Meaning. Purpose. Inner development. Depth of character. Wisdom.
A person can score poorly on one axis and extraordinarily high on the other.
There is, however, one part of your reply that genuinely worries me.
It is the sentence where you describe yourself as broken.
Not because I do not understand why you feel that way. Given what you have experienced, I understand it completely.
What worries me is the “I am” hidden inside the sentence.
You and I have discussed this from different angles before. In Kabbalah, in spirituality, in psychology, and even in ordinary life, there is something powerful about the identities we repeatedly claim.
You may feel broken. You may have been beaten up by life. You may have experienced rejection, disappointment and injustice. But those things are not the same as actually BEING broken.
In fact, I do not believe you are broken at all.
I believe you have been repeatedly struck in places where most people would have collapsed long ago, yet you continue thinking, writing, reflecting, creating and reaching out.
Broken things do not do that. Exhausted things do that.
Wounded things do that. Discouraged things do that. But not broken things.
And if I may (again) be slightly Kabbalistic for a moment, I suspect part of your task in this life is not to become whole, but to remember that you already are.
The world keeps trying to convince people that they are the verdicts placed upon them. Too old. Too strange. Too difficult. Too different. Too unsuccessful.
Yet I suspect the deeper truth is closer to the Hermit we discussed earlier.
The Hermit carries a lantern.
At first it illuminates only a few steps ahead.
Later it becomes bright enough to guide others.
And perhaps that is where I see you differently than you currently see yourself.
I do not see a broken man.
I see a man carrying a lantern and occasionally forgetting that he is holding it.
The way I see you, your greatest strength has never been technical knowledge, career history or any of the metrics by which employers evaluate people.
Your greatest strength is depth matched with decency & morale.
You possess a degree of reflection that is exceptionally rare. There are very few people with whom I can have conversations that genuinely challenge my thinking. You are one of them.
The difference between us, perhaps, is that I eventually wandered into territory that many would call spiritual. Not because I started collecting crystals or casting spells, but because I eventually reached a point where the conventional explanations were no longer sufficient. I either had to become mad or become willing to question the boundaries of my own worldview. So I became a kind of mystic. Perhaps I always was.
And doing so changed everything. It did not solve all my problems. Nor did it pay my bills. But it moved the walls of the prison. And once the walls move, reality begins to look different.
You have many of the qualities I see in good therapists. The ability to observe. The ability to reflect. The ability to understand complexity. The ability to see beyond appearances. Our culture is extraordinarily left-brain focused. Information is everywhere. Wisdom is rare. You possess more of the latter than you perhaps realise.
And finally, let me be completely practical.
If the alternative truly becomes living in a park with a sleeping bag, you should know that you have friends.
Nordjylland exists. A camping wagon exists. Plans can be made.
The Hermit may walk alone, but that does not mean he walks without allies.
Perhaps the subject of alchemy may be of interest for you, and there is a wonderful piece of art, I'd like to show you. You can find the illustration here:
I have taken the text from my book, where I cover the subject briefly:
"Long before psychology emerged as a discipline, alchemists described transformation not only in terms of metals, but in the language of the soul. Their Great Work, the Magnum Opus, begins with Nigredo, the blackening. In this stage, matter is reduced to its formless and chaotic essence. The prima materia must rot, dissolve, and decay before it can be reborn. Only when the old form has been thoroughly undone can purification and illumination begin. Mystics of the Dark Night speak in remarkably similar terms. The experience of desolation, emptiness, and loss of meaning corresponds to a psychic Nigredo. Just as the alchemist placed his substance within the vessel and allowed it to decompose, so too the soul must remain within the collapse of its former structures. Nothing escapes this process. Illusions, identities, and securities are all consumed, not as punishment, but as preparation.
What is false cannot survive, and what is real cannot yet be seen.
To illustrate this stage, consider a piece of the artwork Sammlung Alchymistischer Schriften (Collection of Alchemical Writings), shown in Figure 2:
A skeletal figure stands beneath a darkened sky, wielding both a scythe and an arrow. The skeleton represents death as an inevitability rather than an event. The scythe severs what has reached its limit, while the arrow pierces directly through illusion. Above, the Sun is eclipsed by the Moon. Consciousness is obscured. Clarity, identity, and direction are temporarily swallowed by the unconscious. Light is not destroyed, but rendered inaccessible. Beneath this eclipsed sky lies a dying figure representing Mercury. In alchemy, Mercury is the principle of flow, mediation, and connection between opposites. Here, it is in collapse. The caduceus, the staff entwined with two serpents, lies abandoned beside him. This symbol of integration and balance has been dropped. The psyche can no longer reconcile its contradictions. Inner coherence is lost. A black bird bends down to peck at Mercury’s eyes. The eyes symbolise perception itself. The way reality has been structured and interpreted is now dismantled. What once appeared certain becomes unreliable. This is not mere confusion, but a necessary undoing of vision. Nearby lie two skulls marked Salt and Sulphur. These represent fundamental alchemical principles. Salt is structure, form, and stability. Sulphur is energy, drive, and intensity. Their reduction to skulls indicates that both structure and energy have been exhausted. The personality, as it was known, can no longer sustain itself. The skulls rest beneath a hollow tree. The tree, once a symbol of life and growth, is now empty. The outer form remains, but the inner vitality has withdrawn. What once seemed alive is revealed as hollow.
And yet, the image does not end in finality. In the background, incense rises from a vessel. Solid matter becomes invisible fragrance. Something is already being refined, even as everything appears to decay. Nearby, a bush bears both red and white flowers. Red suggests life and intensity. White points toward purification and clarity. The next phase is already present, though not yet dominant. This moment is pivotal within the Magnum Opus. Nigredo is not a failure, but a foundation. Dissolution is not an error, but a requirement. What cannot dissolve cannot transform.
As expressed in Sammlung Alchymistischer Schriften:
“Dissolution is the first operation which has to take place in the Art of Alchemy, for the order of Nature requires that the body, or matter, be changed into water, which is the much spoken of Mercury. The living silver dissolves the adjoined pure Sulphur. This dissolution is nothing but a killing of the moist with the dry, in fact a putrefaction, and consequently turns the matter black.”
In psychological terms, this is the phase where identity, meaning, and control can no longer be relied upon. The structures that once sustained the self becomes inert. The mediating function collapses. Perception fractures. What remains is not clarity, but exposure. This is the threshold.
Nigredo is not a refinement of the old self, but its disintegration. Not because it was wrong, but because it is insufficient for what is to come. Only when the matter has turned black can the work truly begin.
Carl Gustav Jung was among the first modern thinkers to recognise this parallel explicitly. For him, alchemy provided a symbolic map of individuation. Nigredo corresponded to the confrontation with the shadow, the necessary darkness that precedes integration. As he observed, “the experience of the Self is always a defeat for the ego.” The ego must, in a sense, dissolve within the vessel of suffering so that a deeper centre may emerge.
For those undergoing the Dark Night, Nigredo offers a framework that both clarifies and dignifies the process.
What feels like collapse is not meaningless destruction, but a stage within a larger unfolding. The blackness is not the end. It is the ground in which something new is prepared. Alchemists referred to the next stage as Albedo, the whitening. The first light does not come by avoiding the darkness, but by passing fully through it.
For therapists, this symbolic language is not merely poetic. It provides a container for experiences that otherwise feel chaotic and without meaning. The task is not to remove the darkness, but to recognise its function. In this sense, Nigredo and the Dark Night are not separate phenomena, but two expressions of the same underlying process, a descent into darkness without which no genuine transformation can occur.
PS. I almost forgot. Listen in to this known song from the 80'ies. You may be able to relate to the lyrics on a deeper level given the topic you started:
I was struggling to make out what they were singing in the chorus. Was it “I think I’m too young to die here” or “I think I’m too young for this”? I heard the former, but every set of lyrics I could find suggested it was the latter.
Well, I thought, why not just call one of the guys and ask? ;-)
I managed to find Kreutzfeldt’s number. His grown-up son answered the phone and told me that his father was away on a trip to Sweden. However, he trusted me enough to give me the number.
A few days later, I called and got Kreutzfeldt himself on the line. I began by praising him for what I thought was an absolutely wonderful piece of music, and then I asked my question about the chorus. In fact, he first asked me what I thought I was hearing, and I replied, “I think I’m too young to die here.” He then told me that the actual lyric was, “I think I’m too young for this.”
I then proceeded to ask him a bit more about the song and how it had come into being. Did it start with the lyrics, after which he composed the music? Or was it the other way around?
That’s when he told me a remarkable story.
He was sitting at home composing the piece on his grand piano. At that point there were no lyrics yet. The vibrations from the piano caused a book to fall from a bookshelf and open at a specific page. When he picked it up, he discovered that it was a collection of poems by Dan Turèll, and the particular poem on that page turned out to fit the song almost perfectly, more or less word for word.
A fantastic story.
One could almost believe that the late Dan had a hand in it. 😊
Nice story :) And good that you contacted him, so he could explain.
I understand your confusion, because he is not singing "I am too young for this" – I can't hear exactly what he is singing instead, but it is not that. The reverb and all makes it all a bit blurry.
Nice song, btw. – I remember it from long ago. I think I have a vinyl record with it, just never listening to it, but I should.
Dan Turéll was a special type, always fascinating, provoking, and – thinking. So I liked him.
When he found out that he was deadly ill, he made a song called "I like the everyday" (which became "A tribute to everyday things" in the English edition) – because, of all the things in life someone could perhaps be sad about losing, that mundane thing of being alive, with all its twists and annoyances, was the most important. I have made it a goal to be inspired by that in my ambitions.
Thank you – alchemy for the mind seems to be a useful topic, and you write beautifully about it.
There seems to be a bit of the same ideas as brainwashing in it, even though I assume that the purpose is different.
It's interesting, historically speaking, as it was a development toward understanding how matters compose and combine, and how new matter can be made from existing. Something we benefit from today.
Yes, there are several axes, and some are strangely neglected – it counts also for the one we call mental wellbeing, which would include such as the effects of high stress during long periods, etc. – society keeps stressing people, even though it is now well-known that it is bad for us. Three months off work, then back, and then we never talk about it again. If not being fired immediately, which to some managers seem to be the easy way.
The axis with meaning, purpose, wisdom, etc., you mention, would indeed be a good one to integrate in social life, but we lost it with modernization – in an uproar against the too dominant church society of the previous period. Technical spirits entered to receive our prayers instead of the old, intangible god(s), and this part has only got worse – the latest development with AI has moved people's mindset totally away from anything real and into the computer universe. And, noticably: with everybody now being convinced that AI is better than humans. Nothing, a human can think out, is better thanc what AI can do, is the new mantra – the new religion.
It means that the attention to human wisdom is not coming back right away.
But you are right, each of us have such a line of thoughts and competencies, just underplayed or even frawned upon by our surroundings, should we happen to display it.
It is a rare kind of strength you have managed to build on the area, despite all odds in this society, so you can be proud of that – and it is interesting to follow, to see what it can lead to. You upcoming book is already a great step forward.
As for being broken or not: if this is how I am seen by people who should otherwise be potential colleagues or other social connections, I have to deal with it as something real. Maybe I am not broken, but here comes the cubist thinking into play again: they view on me needs to be included in the definition of me. If I am being rejected from jobs I apply to, because people genuinely believe that I am unable to do even simple work, then I must, like the Hermit on the card you linked to, keep the stick solidly on the ground and stay aware of the situation. Otherwise, no amount of wisdom will bring me forward. I am mowing from somewhere, and I need to know where that is.
Sure, reality can change, and someone's view on it too – and that is a needed development, also for me. Basically, because it isn't realistically to be restrained in the long run by other people's misguided view on what is real. We all need to see the walls and borders for ourselves, to really know them and understand what they'll mean for us.
And thanks for you kind practicality :) Maybe there's enough diesel on the car to get that far. I would feel like shooting a sequel to Thelma & Louise if setting out for such a journey :) But they saw it as needed to do what they did, and I may also get to see it as needed.
“I am not responsible for the version of me that exists in your mind.”
Of course, that is only half the story. If enough people hold a particular version of us in their minds, and if they happen to be hiring managers, colleagues, or gatekeepers, their perception has real-world consequences. In that sense, I completely understand your predicament.
What strikes me, though, is that you seem able to hold two truths at the same time. On the one hand, you refuse to deny the reality of the walls that are there. On the other, you refuse to define yourself by them. That is not an easy balance to maintain.
I also wish I had some comforting words or some grand solution. The answer is not always to start one’s own company, as you already know. People often present entrepreneurship as some universal escape route, but it isn’t. I know plenty of people who were effectively pushed into independence because the regular labour market no longer had room for them. I also know people who accepted a life of owning very little and living quietly on the margins of the system. Neither path is necessarily easy, glamorous, or financially successful.
To be honest, it still breaks my heart to see how much collateral damage we have become willing to accept in our so-called wellfare system. There was a time when a welfare society would have considered it a failure if capable and experienced people were left behind. Today it often feels as if we have normalised it. We call it efficiency, flexibility, optimisation, or market forces, but behind the words are actual human beings.
And perhaps that is where I differ slightly from your cubist perspective. Other people’s views should certainly be included in our understanding of our situation, but not necessarily in our definition of ourselves. Otherwise we risk becoming prisoners of every misunderstanding, prejudice, or projection that crosses our path.
In any case, enough philosophy for now.
Come up here and visit me for a few days. Be my guest. We are entering the summer, which - for me (unfortunately) is a period with low activity.
Take the Kombardo Express from Copenhagen to Aalborg ( DKK 139–159 if booked sensibly). Be my guest. We’ll go for a few walks in the forest, put the world’s problems on trial, solve none of them, and return home convinced we have nevertheless achieved something important.
At the very least, we’ll prove that there is still enough diesel left in the tank for one more adventure.
Of course, I'm not necessarily responsible for what goes on in other people's minds – I could be, but may not. But to compare with something visible: I'm not responsible either for people driving in the wrong side of the road, and yet, I do want to keep an eye on it to avoid being hit by them. And if they specifically want to hit me, then I want to be extra observant.
I agree fully that the wellfare systems have been ruined – what I have experienced through my life is a general lack of will to help and a focus on humiliating people, which shouldn't be the idea of them, but also a much worse situation today than previously. They deliberately break the laws because they know that those who are hit by this are too weak to protest, and those who are not hit, do not care.
That's very much against the spirit that should have been the basis of these mechanisms.
And yes, the fundamental idea in these services' administration is now that if people ask for help, then they are worthless, which is why it doesn't matter if they are not getting any help. The human inside is forgotten, it is all about money, and about exercising power.
It could be nice to meet and solve or not solve the world's problems, so let's see if and when that can be arranged.
In most tarot decks, The Hermit stands alone on a mountain, holding a lantern. At first glance he appears lonely, and many people assume he has somehow been left behind by society. Yet the card suggests something quite different.
The Hermit is not alone because nobody wanted him. He is alone because he followed the questions further than most people are willing to go. The higher one climbs, the fewer fellow travellers remain. Not because they are lesser people, but because most become occupied with careers, identities, routines and certainties lower down the mountain. The Hermit keeps climbing. He keeps asking. He keeps looking. Eventually he reaches a place where he can no longer navigate by the light of society and must carry his own lantern.
Reading your reflections, I wonder whether part of your suffering comes from interpreting the consequences of that journey as evidence of failure.
The Hermit often appears strange to the villagers below. He asks unusual questions. He sees connections others overlook. He values truth more than belonging. He notices contradictions that others would rather ignore. Those traits rarely make a person popular, but popularity and wisdom have never been close relatives.
The irony is that many people who appear well integrated into society are in fact deeply disconnected from themselves, while The Hermit may appear disconnected from society precisely because he has become more connected to himself.
When you describe feeling like a splinter, I understand the experience. Yet I also wonder whether that is partly how the village sees The Hermit. Most people see fragments because fragments are all they have time for. They see age, profession, achievements, failures, opinions and labels. The Hermit sees patterns, meaning, trajectory and the larger story. Because he naturally sees wholes, he feels misunderstood when others focus only on fragments.
The challenge for The Hermit is that he sometimes judges himself using the standards of the village. He asks why he was not invited, recognised or understood. Yet his path was never really the village path. His gift was never fitting in. His gift was seeing further. I believe this is connected to the core mission of your soul.
When I read your text, I do not see a broken man. I see someone carrying a lantern through a dark forest, occasionally wondering why he looks different from the people who never left the village.
The answer may simply be that he has seen more of the forest than they have.
Another thing that struck me while reading your text is that, despite some similarities, I don’t think you and I experience this in quite the same way.
You write about being ghosted, overlooked and treated as fragments rather than as a whole person. There is a sadness in that experience, and understandably so. You actually want to contribute and take part in the world, but the world doesn't recognise the true you.
Curiously, I have discovered that I don’t actually mind being a ghost.
In fact, the older I get, the more I seem to prefer it.
There was a time when I probably wanted more recognition, more belonging and more participation in the wider world. Today, I find myself increasingly content living quietly on the edge of things. I have very little desire to participate in systems, institutions and social games that I perceive as unhealthy, distorted, superficial or disconnected from what truly matters. But don't look at things as an escape. Nor look at it as a fight. Look at it as a reflective and pragmatic approach.
I am not standing outside the village waiting to be invited in.
I left the village (okay, I was kicked out, but at some point I decided not to go back).
Not because I hate the villagers, but because I eventually realised that many of the conversations taking place there no longer interested me.
What fascinates me is that, from the perspective of the village, both situations can look identical. The person who has been excluded and the person who has quietly walked away may appear equally absent. Yet internally they are very different states.
Perhaps that is one reason why your reflections made me think of The Hermit. Not as a symbol of loneliness, but as a symbol of someone who has gradually become more interested in truth than in belonging.
The funny thing is that I genuinely enjoy much of the anonymity that comes with this position. I rather like moving through the world as a ghost. The only part of society that stubbornly refuses to cooperate with my wish is the tax authorities. I would be perfectly happy remaining invisible if they would kindly agree to ghost me as well. Unfortunately, they seem to be among the very few institutions that never lose interest in a person.
Perhaps that is their spiritual gift. Or perhaps it is simply their profession.
Either way, they remain remarkably resistant to enlightenment.
He he – yes, the tax office can be quite insisting. For that reason, it was also a surprise to me, after some time of not working in Denmark (while living in Sweden), that I had to apply for being allowed to again pay tax there. And in Sweden, I had to apply for being allowed to pay tax of the salary, my Estonian company paid out to me. There's no automatic right to become their target – but when you're in, they won't let you out again without a fight :)
About how the world sees me: yes, it is a genuine, but unfulfilled wish, or dream, I have, that people will care to understand me better - and understand other people better as well, as I see how this is a general phenomenon.
But I grow further and further away from that dream coming true, often feeling that I really do move away from the villagers, like you describe the Hermite does. I tend to believe, though, that they are not all just staying at the same spot – they are also moving, but from a distance, they still look close to each other. Each of them, however, may feel similar to me – that they have moved away from the flock.
This way, we can all become more and more isolated. The way to improve on it is, in my extremely naïve way of thinking, that we, who at least see that this is happening, will spend some time and energy on trying to find each other – to make a "global village" of people who are not identical but at least recognize each others' wish, need, and right to keep developing and still be considered part of the world society.
The trend to push out and ghost people who seem to be drifting a bit away from the norm isn't healthy. Neither for anyone directly involved, nor for the society as a phenomenon. I have heard how such as ants are careful to kill and get rid of individuals who stop behaving like the flock, but I have also heard how new research points at ants actually being much more individualistic than previously attributed – as many as 30% of them at any time are not doing any useful work, but are pretending to do so, making them much more similar to a human society than I guess most people would willingly admit.
A world society that respects the individual rights will, of course, also respect that someone prefers more solitude, or being able to sit on the edge of society, studying it and thinking about life, society, eternity, or whatever.
I don't think we are there at all. We are not as free and flexible as the ants, really. The ants still get something to eat, a place to live, and the backup of a society, even if they are temporarily not performing any real work – they still belong. That's where humans still have something to learn. Also, if an ant is "born" into a society, it doesn't have to prove its value, it automatically belongs there, and the society will accept the responsibility for keeping it alive.
I like that image of the Hermite, and I actually have felt something like that more and more often during the last years. I know that I no longer fit in with all the same people, in all the same situations, as I previously was with and in – but I also wonder if it ever was so, or if I just wanted to believe it. If they didn't feel that I beloned, then maybe I didn't? If I didn't feel that their worlds could inspire me, then maybe I had just moved, mentally, to a different place?
Looking for a tribe becomes complicated then, because there isn't any. It can take a while to understand and accept that – followed by that period of confusion that comes from the forever ruminating question: "what then, if not that?"
The splinters, as I indicated in the answer before (previous level), was a cubist expression, so to speak, being the image people had of me, and me seeing that image, meaning that I also understood that it could be an image of me. Even if I saw myself as unsplintered, I had to relate to the perspective of others not seeing the same.
"Failure" is also cubist. I can't ignore the fact that people seeing me as a failure, like in the example with making my own company, will make them treat me as a failure, eventually causing that failure to become the reality. Same thing as the fatalism the Swedish robots step into when seeing someone in trouble. It's a bit like a gardener removing mis-grown plants, rather than seeing the beauty in what they have become. Like the blacksmith decides when the sword is a sword, the gardener decides when a plant looks correct – and society, and its members, decide when a person is a failure. A person can choose to ignore that verdict, but it is not easy to fight against while staying part of the society – and them, the Hermite way is the way to go, or something that from the villagers' point of view is similar. In fact, they will throw you out to the wolfs, making this the only chance you have.
We become wiser from that treatment, but not necessarily happier.
In your stories, people who are closer to death than to life see ghosts. I know that from people I have known in that situation, so I tend to take it as fact, not just a literary convenience. But I also feel that those who are very much alive feel pleasure in treating others as ghosts.
Different kinds of ghosts, I suppose, but with similar outcome for the one in question. The 2-dimensional treatment is part of it. The wish to remove the "annoyance" is another. The lack of including them in life is a third, and the worst.
Jørgen, this is a remarkably intelligent piece of writing.
What struck me most when reading your text was that I don’t think it is really about death.
It begins with death, birth, leaves, raindrops and swords, but somewhere along the way another question emerges: “What exactly remains when all the familiar forms have fallen away?” And that is a very mature question.
The text appears to ask when life begins and ends, but beneath that I sense a deeper inquiry. Not whether you are alive or dead, but whether there is something in you that exists independently of the identities, roles and stories through which you have travelled. Something that most people will build their identity on.
The leaf, the raindrop and the sword all seem to circle around the same mystery: Continuity through transformation.
And then suddenly the text becomes personal, when you write about splinters, job interviews, about people seeing fragments rather than a person, about being replaced, about being tolerated rather than welcomed and about being ghosted.
The philosophical reflection gives way to something more intimate: The experience of not being recognised as a whole human being. That is a particular kind of loneliness. And it is also something I can personally relate to. It is not the loneliness of being alone, but the loneliness of being misperceived. People who naturally see depth in others often suffer greatly when others relate to them through categories, labels and surface observations.
Yet while reading, another possibility kept returning to me: Perhaps the story is not merely about rejection. Perhaps it is also about metamorphosis. The image of the butterfly appears near the beginning of your text, but then quietly disappears again. I think it deserves to stay. Because there is something curious about metamorphosis. If we could ask the caterpillar what is happening halfway through the process, it would probably describe its situation as catastrophe. Its old idenity is being dissolved in a kind of biological soup. Its former way of moving no longer works. The structures that once defined it are breaking down. From the caterpillar’s perspective, it might look very much like death. And it is a wrestle for the butterfly to get out of the shell. Only later does it become apparent that what looked like destruction was actually transformation.
I have often wondered whether many of the deepest human crises are misunderstood because we view them from the perspective of the caterpillar rather than the butterfly.
What if there are periods in life when the old self genuinely has to fall apart?
Not because it failed. Not because it was worthless. But because it has completed its purpose.
When reading your text, I could not help thinking about those traditions that describe a stage of profound disorientation before a deeper integration emerges. The Christian mystics called it the Dark Night of the Soul, and this happens to be the title of my coming book. I have thought about this subject for years, and I am living it. In alchemy it is called Nigredo, the blackening.
In Kabbalah we might speak of a descent into concealment before a higher revelation.
Different languages and systems, perhaps pointing toward the same territory, that from within such a process, life often appears fragmented.
The old narrative stops making sense. The pieces no longer fit together. The continuity that once felt obvious becomes difficult to perceive. The window shatters. The map becomes unreadable. And yet, from another perspective, something else may be happening.
The fragmentation itself may be exposing an identity that was previously hidden beneath the roles.
Reading your text, I found myself wondering whether you have spent much of your life identifying with the various forms you inhabited: Employee, Consultant, Entrepreneur, Outsider, Insider, Accepted, Rejected, Valued, Discarded.
But what if all of those were merely temporary expressions or transitional states?
What if the process is gradually stripping them away, not to leave you with less, but to reveal something more fundamental?
There is a subtle idea in Kabbalah that comes to mind.
The vessels shattered.
The Light did not.
The fragments scattered.
The Light remained.
When I read your reflections about splinters, I wondered whether you may be identifying yourself with the shattered vessel.
The broken glass. The discarded fragment. The rusty sword.
But what if those are not what you really are?
What if they are merely the forms through which something deeper has travelled?
The fascinating thing is that your own metaphors already point in that direction.
You grant continuity to almost everything.
The leaf existed before it unfolded. The raindrop existed before it fell. The sword existed before it was forged and continues after it rusts. You recognise that forms change while something persists. Yet when the subject becomes yourself, you become less generous.
The leaf receives continuity. The sword receives continuity. The raindrop receives continuity.
But Jørgen becomes a pile of disconnected splinters.
I am not convinced :-)
In fact, I suspect your own text quietly argues against that conclusion.
You describe yourself as a leaf. Yet a leaf is never merely a leaf. It is an expression of the tree. The tree is an expression of the forest. The forest is an expression of something larger still.
Likewise, a raindrop is not separate from the ocean. It is the ocean temporarily appearing as a drop.
Perhaps the deepest question is not whether the leaf survives.
Perhaps it is whether the leaf was ever separate from the tree in the first place.
And perhaps the same question applies to us.
From the perspective of ordinary consciousness, life often appears to be the story of a separate individual trying to hold itself together.
From the perspective of higher consciousness, life begins to look more like a process through which something larger expresses itself through a temporary form.
The form changes.
The essence remains.
The identities come and go.
The witness remains.
The masks change.
The awareness behind them remains.
If that is true, then perhaps the splinters are not evidence that you have been broken. And even a piece of holographic splinter contains the full image.
Perhaps they are also evidence that something in you has outgrown the frame that once held them together.
And perhaps what feels like disappearance is not disappearance at all.
Perhaps it is the uncomfortable, often painful process through which a person gradually discovers that he was never merely the leaf, the sword, the raindrop or the window.
He was always the life moving through them all.
Thanks – writing intelligently is always my aim. Sometimes I succeed a bit. When noticed, that inspires me to do more of it :)
This text was a sandwich-work: meaning that first, I was sad to receive a rejection on a job application on which I had actually had an interview – then I went to the park to sit on a bench and reflect a bit, and I couldn't resist writing down some of my thoughts – and then I went home, deciding to put the abstracted thoughts into a bigger frame and publish it, so the remaining part of the text was written as that – a comprehensible frame, or holder, for the thoughts.
The whole thing arose from sadness, but also from a sense of realism: without getting a job now, I will very soon have to go to the park to stay. Bringing my sleeping bag, hoping not to be put on fire by robots in kill-mode.
Throughout known history, philosophers have had the luxury of being able to philosophize without fearing that it would be their end. They mostly had a life situation that would allow them to spend time on it, making all thoughts of the essence of humanity and survival a truly philosophical exercise – not so often connected to the real world. Not having a need to plan for a situation that would bring them something to eat, for instance.
Now, for some of us, there is that connection. Hence, the need to reach out to both worlds – that of metaphors, and that of life as experienced.
The sadness, btw., being amplified by the fact that this was a simple job for which I was truly qualified – I would be able to do this, via the sum of several fragments of my life experience, even though not all of them would be in play, but these people were unable to see that. And, I felt that it was half my own fault: I have come to a point where it is no longer just the world that sees me as broken – now I am. Now all the pieces have fallen out the frame that they have been kicking at for so long, so I can't even manage to look like if I'm an attractive choice for a job that I could do better than many others. And I am beginning to wonder if I even can do anything – or if they are right in their verdict, that I am trash that should just be wiped out.
With the background out of the way – thanks for your brilliant thoughts :)
I like the idea of moving through different shapes, and I think it is how it goes for most of us. I think that it is fair to claim that some stop along the way, trying to stick to a certain form forever, until they have to give up. It usually appears to them too late, that the life they believed in, the level in society they thought they were at, was just for a while – that now they lose their job, most often just before pension age, for some evil reason, and everything falls apart for them, leaving them with a life that is without dignity, for the many years that typically passes until they can see the end.
Some people are better off, but society does have a tendency to kill people socially long before their physical end is near.
In a different perspective – looking at the inner journey – yes, certainly. Some of us move and develop, and we do not necessarily fit into the old frame forever. Leaving that one, maybe several times through life, may be necessary in order to grow – or transform, as we are not necessarily becoming bigger, just moving to a different viewpoint.
Looking at life as a whole as one such form is of course more advanced. It is comforting, because it means that we both haven't been as miserable always, and also will not continue that way. The idea of a pleasant Heaven waiting for us can make us accept a bad current situation; a kind of thinking that religion in general has benefited from.
Without religion, it is still possible to imagine that soul, that isn't mind or flesh, being existent. That one that can look at the pile of splinters, in my example. It is not the soul looking at the soul – it is something looking at something else. The ability for us to see ourselves from the outside speaks about a possibly more advanced construction than just the chemical brain processes in a physical body.
Being the life rather than what is alive, makes sense then. And, no matter what else we may of may not decide to believe in, we can at least focus on being that life in the time frame we can see – i.e., until our current holster dies, physically.
Jørgen,
There are several things in your reply that resonate deeply with me.
First of all, I think your tribe exists.
The challenge is that it is not geographically concentrated. It is scattered across countries, professions, ages and backgrounds. Some of the people I have felt most at home with have been encountered almost by accident, often after years of searching in the wrong places.
The difficulty is that finding your tribe is not like finding a village. It is more like finding stars in a night sky. They are separated by enormous distances, yet somehow belong to the same constellation.
I also think you are right that many people feel they are drifting away from the flock. The difference is that most never stop long enough to reflect on it. They distract themselves, adapt, compromise, or simply become busy. You and I seem to have a tendency to stop and examine the process itself.
Over the years I have attended many informal as well as formal gatherings, conferences and events with tribemembers. Sometimes as a participant, sometimes as a speaker. I have spoken about morality, critical thinking, natural law, consciousness and society itself. One thing I have noticed repeatedly is the amount of fear that exists beneath the surface. Fear of exclusion. Fear of failure. Fear of losing status. Fear of losing income. Fear of not belonging.
So when you describe the anxiety of not knowing how the bills will be paid, I understand that, and I can relate to it personally. That is not a philosophical problem. That is a real problem.
At the same time, I think society has become strangely one-dimensional.
We measure people almost exclusively on a success-failure axis. Income. Position. Career. Recognition. Visibility.
Yet I have met countless people who score highly on that scale and feel completely empty inside. They have achieved what society told them to achieve and discovered that the prize was hollow.
Conversely, I have met people who would be classified as failures by society’s standards, yet who possess depth, integrity, wisdom and meaning far beyond many of the so-called successes.
There is another axis that society rarely measures. Meaning. Purpose. Inner development. Depth of character. Wisdom.
A person can score poorly on one axis and extraordinarily high on the other.
There is, however, one part of your reply that genuinely worries me.
It is the sentence where you describe yourself as broken.
Not because I do not understand why you feel that way. Given what you have experienced, I understand it completely.
What worries me is the “I am” hidden inside the sentence.
You and I have discussed this from different angles before. In Kabbalah, in spirituality, in psychology, and even in ordinary life, there is something powerful about the identities we repeatedly claim.
You may feel broken. You may have been beaten up by life. You may have experienced rejection, disappointment and injustice. But those things are not the same as actually BEING broken.
In fact, I do not believe you are broken at all.
I believe you have been repeatedly struck in places where most people would have collapsed long ago, yet you continue thinking, writing, reflecting, creating and reaching out.
Broken things do not do that. Exhausted things do that.
Wounded things do that. Discouraged things do that. But not broken things.
And if I may (again) be slightly Kabbalistic for a moment, I suspect part of your task in this life is not to become whole, but to remember that you already are.
The world keeps trying to convince people that they are the verdicts placed upon them. Too old. Too strange. Too difficult. Too different. Too unsuccessful.
Yet I suspect the deeper truth is closer to the Hermit we discussed earlier.
The Hermit carries a lantern.
At first it illuminates only a few steps ahead.
Later it becomes bright enough to guide others.
And perhaps that is where I see you differently than you currently see yourself.
I do not see a broken man.
I see a man carrying a lantern and occasionally forgetting that he is holding it.
The way I see you, your greatest strength has never been technical knowledge, career history or any of the metrics by which employers evaluate people.
Your greatest strength is depth matched with decency & morale.
You possess a degree of reflection that is exceptionally rare. There are very few people with whom I can have conversations that genuinely challenge my thinking. You are one of them.
The difference between us, perhaps, is that I eventually wandered into territory that many would call spiritual. Not because I started collecting crystals or casting spells, but because I eventually reached a point where the conventional explanations were no longer sufficient. I either had to become mad or become willing to question the boundaries of my own worldview. So I became a kind of mystic. Perhaps I always was.
And doing so changed everything. It did not solve all my problems. Nor did it pay my bills. But it moved the walls of the prison. And once the walls move, reality begins to look different.
You have many of the qualities I see in good therapists. The ability to observe. The ability to reflect. The ability to understand complexity. The ability to see beyond appearances. Our culture is extraordinarily left-brain focused. Information is everywhere. Wisdom is rare. You possess more of the latter than you perhaps realise.
And finally, let me be completely practical.
If the alternative truly becomes living in a park with a sleeping bag, you should know that you have friends.
Nordjylland exists. A camping wagon exists. Plans can be made.
The Hermit may walk alone, but that does not mean he walks without allies.
Perhaps the subject of alchemy may be of interest for you, and there is a wonderful piece of art, I'd like to show you. You can find the illustration here:
https://eveharms.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/sammlung-alchymistischer-schriften-5-web.jpg
I have taken the text from my book, where I cover the subject briefly:
"Long before psychology emerged as a discipline, alchemists described transformation not only in terms of metals, but in the language of the soul. Their Great Work, the Magnum Opus, begins with Nigredo, the blackening. In this stage, matter is reduced to its formless and chaotic essence. The prima materia must rot, dissolve, and decay before it can be reborn. Only when the old form has been thoroughly undone can purification and illumination begin. Mystics of the Dark Night speak in remarkably similar terms. The experience of desolation, emptiness, and loss of meaning corresponds to a psychic Nigredo. Just as the alchemist placed his substance within the vessel and allowed it to decompose, so too the soul must remain within the collapse of its former structures. Nothing escapes this process. Illusions, identities, and securities are all consumed, not as punishment, but as preparation.
What is false cannot survive, and what is real cannot yet be seen.
To illustrate this stage, consider a piece of the artwork Sammlung Alchymistischer Schriften (Collection of Alchemical Writings), shown in Figure 2:
A skeletal figure stands beneath a darkened sky, wielding both a scythe and an arrow. The skeleton represents death as an inevitability rather than an event. The scythe severs what has reached its limit, while the arrow pierces directly through illusion. Above, the Sun is eclipsed by the Moon. Consciousness is obscured. Clarity, identity, and direction are temporarily swallowed by the unconscious. Light is not destroyed, but rendered inaccessible. Beneath this eclipsed sky lies a dying figure representing Mercury. In alchemy, Mercury is the principle of flow, mediation, and connection between opposites. Here, it is in collapse. The caduceus, the staff entwined with two serpents, lies abandoned beside him. This symbol of integration and balance has been dropped. The psyche can no longer reconcile its contradictions. Inner coherence is lost. A black bird bends down to peck at Mercury’s eyes. The eyes symbolise perception itself. The way reality has been structured and interpreted is now dismantled. What once appeared certain becomes unreliable. This is not mere confusion, but a necessary undoing of vision. Nearby lie two skulls marked Salt and Sulphur. These represent fundamental alchemical principles. Salt is structure, form, and stability. Sulphur is energy, drive, and intensity. Their reduction to skulls indicates that both structure and energy have been exhausted. The personality, as it was known, can no longer sustain itself. The skulls rest beneath a hollow tree. The tree, once a symbol of life and growth, is now empty. The outer form remains, but the inner vitality has withdrawn. What once seemed alive is revealed as hollow.
And yet, the image does not end in finality. In the background, incense rises from a vessel. Solid matter becomes invisible fragrance. Something is already being refined, even as everything appears to decay. Nearby, a bush bears both red and white flowers. Red suggests life and intensity. White points toward purification and clarity. The next phase is already present, though not yet dominant. This moment is pivotal within the Magnum Opus. Nigredo is not a failure, but a foundation. Dissolution is not an error, but a requirement. What cannot dissolve cannot transform.
As expressed in Sammlung Alchymistischer Schriften:
“Dissolution is the first operation which has to take place in the Art of Alchemy, for the order of Nature requires that the body, or matter, be changed into water, which is the much spoken of Mercury. The living silver dissolves the adjoined pure Sulphur. This dissolution is nothing but a killing of the moist with the dry, in fact a putrefaction, and consequently turns the matter black.”
In psychological terms, this is the phase where identity, meaning, and control can no longer be relied upon. The structures that once sustained the self becomes inert. The mediating function collapses. Perception fractures. What remains is not clarity, but exposure. This is the threshold.
Nigredo is not a refinement of the old self, but its disintegration. Not because it was wrong, but because it is insufficient for what is to come. Only when the matter has turned black can the work truly begin.
Carl Gustav Jung was among the first modern thinkers to recognise this parallel explicitly. For him, alchemy provided a symbolic map of individuation. Nigredo corresponded to the confrontation with the shadow, the necessary darkness that precedes integration. As he observed, “the experience of the Self is always a defeat for the ego.” The ego must, in a sense, dissolve within the vessel of suffering so that a deeper centre may emerge.
For those undergoing the Dark Night, Nigredo offers a framework that both clarifies and dignifies the process.
What feels like collapse is not meaningless destruction, but a stage within a larger unfolding. The blackness is not the end. It is the ground in which something new is prepared. Alchemists referred to the next stage as Albedo, the whitening. The first light does not come by avoiding the darkness, but by passing fully through it.
For therapists, this symbolic language is not merely poetic. It provides a container for experiences that otherwise feel chaotic and without meaning. The task is not to remove the darkness, but to recognise its function. In this sense, Nigredo and the Dark Night are not separate phenomena, but two expressions of the same underlying process, a descent into darkness without which no genuine transformation can occur.
"
PS. I almost forgot. Listen in to this known song from the 80'ies. You may be able to relate to the lyrics on a deeper level given the topic you started:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91LtwWeZ1TI&list=RD91LtwWeZ1TI&start_radio=1
Let me tell you a story as well.
I was struggling to make out what they were singing in the chorus. Was it “I think I’m too young to die here” or “I think I’m too young for this”? I heard the former, but every set of lyrics I could find suggested it was the latter.
Well, I thought, why not just call one of the guys and ask? ;-)
I managed to find Kreutzfeldt’s number. His grown-up son answered the phone and told me that his father was away on a trip to Sweden. However, he trusted me enough to give me the number.
A few days later, I called and got Kreutzfeldt himself on the line. I began by praising him for what I thought was an absolutely wonderful piece of music, and then I asked my question about the chorus. In fact, he first asked me what I thought I was hearing, and I replied, “I think I’m too young to die here.” He then told me that the actual lyric was, “I think I’m too young for this.”
I then proceeded to ask him a bit more about the song and how it had come into being. Did it start with the lyrics, after which he composed the music? Or was it the other way around?
That’s when he told me a remarkable story.
He was sitting at home composing the piece on his grand piano. At that point there were no lyrics yet. The vibrations from the piano caused a book to fall from a bookshelf and open at a specific page. When he picked it up, he discovered that it was a collection of poems by Dan Turèll, and the particular poem on that page turned out to fit the song almost perfectly, more or less word for word.
A fantastic story.
One could almost believe that the late Dan had a hand in it. 😊
Nice story :) And good that you contacted him, so he could explain.
I understand your confusion, because he is not singing "I am too young for this" – I can't hear exactly what he is singing instead, but it is not that. The reverb and all makes it all a bit blurry.
Nice song, btw. – I remember it from long ago. I think I have a vinyl record with it, just never listening to it, but I should.
Dan Turéll was a special type, always fascinating, provoking, and – thinking. So I liked him.
When he found out that he was deadly ill, he made a song called "I like the everyday" (which became "A tribute to everyday things" in the English edition) – because, of all the things in life someone could perhaps be sad about losing, that mundane thing of being alive, with all its twists and annoyances, was the most important. I have made it a goal to be inspired by that in my ambitions.
https://youtu.be/wFGWetPbMws?list=RDwFGWetPbMws
Thank you – alchemy for the mind seems to be a useful topic, and you write beautifully about it.
There seems to be a bit of the same ideas as brainwashing in it, even though I assume that the purpose is different.
It's interesting, historically speaking, as it was a development toward understanding how matters compose and combine, and how new matter can be made from existing. Something we benefit from today.
Yes, there are several axes, and some are strangely neglected – it counts also for the one we call mental wellbeing, which would include such as the effects of high stress during long periods, etc. – society keeps stressing people, even though it is now well-known that it is bad for us. Three months off work, then back, and then we never talk about it again. If not being fired immediately, which to some managers seem to be the easy way.
The axis with meaning, purpose, wisdom, etc., you mention, would indeed be a good one to integrate in social life, but we lost it with modernization – in an uproar against the too dominant church society of the previous period. Technical spirits entered to receive our prayers instead of the old, intangible god(s), and this part has only got worse – the latest development with AI has moved people's mindset totally away from anything real and into the computer universe. And, noticably: with everybody now being convinced that AI is better than humans. Nothing, a human can think out, is better thanc what AI can do, is the new mantra – the new religion.
It means that the attention to human wisdom is not coming back right away.
But you are right, each of us have such a line of thoughts and competencies, just underplayed or even frawned upon by our surroundings, should we happen to display it.
It is a rare kind of strength you have managed to build on the area, despite all odds in this society, so you can be proud of that – and it is interesting to follow, to see what it can lead to. You upcoming book is already a great step forward.
As for being broken or not: if this is how I am seen by people who should otherwise be potential colleagues or other social connections, I have to deal with it as something real. Maybe I am not broken, but here comes the cubist thinking into play again: they view on me needs to be included in the definition of me. If I am being rejected from jobs I apply to, because people genuinely believe that I am unable to do even simple work, then I must, like the Hermit on the card you linked to, keep the stick solidly on the ground and stay aware of the situation. Otherwise, no amount of wisdom will bring me forward. I am mowing from somewhere, and I need to know where that is.
Sure, reality can change, and someone's view on it too – and that is a needed development, also for me. Basically, because it isn't realistically to be restrained in the long run by other people's misguided view on what is real. We all need to see the walls and borders for ourselves, to really know them and understand what they'll mean for us.
And thanks for you kind practicality :) Maybe there's enough diesel on the car to get that far. I would feel like shooting a sequel to Thelma & Louise if setting out for such a journey :) But they saw it as needed to do what they did, and I may also get to see it as needed.
You remind me of a quote I came across recently:
“I am not responsible for the version of me that exists in your mind.”
Of course, that is only half the story. If enough people hold a particular version of us in their minds, and if they happen to be hiring managers, colleagues, or gatekeepers, their perception has real-world consequences. In that sense, I completely understand your predicament.
What strikes me, though, is that you seem able to hold two truths at the same time. On the one hand, you refuse to deny the reality of the walls that are there. On the other, you refuse to define yourself by them. That is not an easy balance to maintain.
I also wish I had some comforting words or some grand solution. The answer is not always to start one’s own company, as you already know. People often present entrepreneurship as some universal escape route, but it isn’t. I know plenty of people who were effectively pushed into independence because the regular labour market no longer had room for them. I also know people who accepted a life of owning very little and living quietly on the margins of the system. Neither path is necessarily easy, glamorous, or financially successful.
To be honest, it still breaks my heart to see how much collateral damage we have become willing to accept in our so-called wellfare system. There was a time when a welfare society would have considered it a failure if capable and experienced people were left behind. Today it often feels as if we have normalised it. We call it efficiency, flexibility, optimisation, or market forces, but behind the words are actual human beings.
And perhaps that is where I differ slightly from your cubist perspective. Other people’s views should certainly be included in our understanding of our situation, but not necessarily in our definition of ourselves. Otherwise we risk becoming prisoners of every misunderstanding, prejudice, or projection that crosses our path.
In any case, enough philosophy for now.
Come up here and visit me for a few days. Be my guest. We are entering the summer, which - for me (unfortunately) is a period with low activity.
Take the Kombardo Express from Copenhagen to Aalborg ( DKK 139–159 if booked sensibly). Be my guest. We’ll go for a few walks in the forest, put the world’s problems on trial, solve none of them, and return home convinced we have nevertheless achieved something important.
At the very least, we’ll prove that there is still enough diesel left in the tank for one more adventure.
Of course, I'm not necessarily responsible for what goes on in other people's minds – I could be, but may not. But to compare with something visible: I'm not responsible either for people driving in the wrong side of the road, and yet, I do want to keep an eye on it to avoid being hit by them. And if they specifically want to hit me, then I want to be extra observant.
I agree fully that the wellfare systems have been ruined – what I have experienced through my life is a general lack of will to help and a focus on humiliating people, which shouldn't be the idea of them, but also a much worse situation today than previously. They deliberately break the laws because they know that those who are hit by this are too weak to protest, and those who are not hit, do not care.
That's very much against the spirit that should have been the basis of these mechanisms.
And yes, the fundamental idea in these services' administration is now that if people ask for help, then they are worthless, which is why it doesn't matter if they are not getting any help. The human inside is forgotten, it is all about money, and about exercising power.
It could be nice to meet and solve or not solve the world's problems, so let's see if and when that can be arranged.
PS. There was another image that kept appearing in my mind while reading your text: The Hermit, from the Tarot deck of cards.
Seehttps://playingcarddecks.com/blogs/tarot-card-meanings/hermit-tarot-card-meaning-with-infographic?srsltid=AfmBOopWoKG1PHHLt6xwDicdFDiUOGlLz5i2XGEe8ivTfJXrnqooeogj
In most tarot decks, The Hermit stands alone on a mountain, holding a lantern. At first glance he appears lonely, and many people assume he has somehow been left behind by society. Yet the card suggests something quite different.
The Hermit is not alone because nobody wanted him. He is alone because he followed the questions further than most people are willing to go. The higher one climbs, the fewer fellow travellers remain. Not because they are lesser people, but because most become occupied with careers, identities, routines and certainties lower down the mountain. The Hermit keeps climbing. He keeps asking. He keeps looking. Eventually he reaches a place where he can no longer navigate by the light of society and must carry his own lantern.
Reading your reflections, I wonder whether part of your suffering comes from interpreting the consequences of that journey as evidence of failure.
The Hermit often appears strange to the villagers below. He asks unusual questions. He sees connections others overlook. He values truth more than belonging. He notices contradictions that others would rather ignore. Those traits rarely make a person popular, but popularity and wisdom have never been close relatives.
The irony is that many people who appear well integrated into society are in fact deeply disconnected from themselves, while The Hermit may appear disconnected from society precisely because he has become more connected to himself.
When you describe feeling like a splinter, I understand the experience. Yet I also wonder whether that is partly how the village sees The Hermit. Most people see fragments because fragments are all they have time for. They see age, profession, achievements, failures, opinions and labels. The Hermit sees patterns, meaning, trajectory and the larger story. Because he naturally sees wholes, he feels misunderstood when others focus only on fragments.
The challenge for The Hermit is that he sometimes judges himself using the standards of the village. He asks why he was not invited, recognised or understood. Yet his path was never really the village path. His gift was never fitting in. His gift was seeing further. I believe this is connected to the core mission of your soul.
When I read your text, I do not see a broken man. I see someone carrying a lantern through a dark forest, occasionally wondering why he looks different from the people who never left the village.
The answer may simply be that he has seen more of the forest than they have.
Sorry, I am not done yet :-)
Another thing that struck me while reading your text is that, despite some similarities, I don’t think you and I experience this in quite the same way.
You write about being ghosted, overlooked and treated as fragments rather than as a whole person. There is a sadness in that experience, and understandably so. You actually want to contribute and take part in the world, but the world doesn't recognise the true you.
Curiously, I have discovered that I don’t actually mind being a ghost.
In fact, the older I get, the more I seem to prefer it.
There was a time when I probably wanted more recognition, more belonging and more participation in the wider world. Today, I find myself increasingly content living quietly on the edge of things. I have very little desire to participate in systems, institutions and social games that I perceive as unhealthy, distorted, superficial or disconnected from what truly matters. But don't look at things as an escape. Nor look at it as a fight. Look at it as a reflective and pragmatic approach.
I am not standing outside the village waiting to be invited in.
I left the village (okay, I was kicked out, but at some point I decided not to go back).
Not because I hate the villagers, but because I eventually realised that many of the conversations taking place there no longer interested me.
What fascinates me is that, from the perspective of the village, both situations can look identical. The person who has been excluded and the person who has quietly walked away may appear equally absent. Yet internally they are very different states.
Perhaps that is one reason why your reflections made me think of The Hermit. Not as a symbol of loneliness, but as a symbol of someone who has gradually become more interested in truth than in belonging.
The funny thing is that I genuinely enjoy much of the anonymity that comes with this position. I rather like moving through the world as a ghost. The only part of society that stubbornly refuses to cooperate with my wish is the tax authorities. I would be perfectly happy remaining invisible if they would kindly agree to ghost me as well. Unfortunately, they seem to be among the very few institutions that never lose interest in a person.
Perhaps that is their spiritual gift. Or perhaps it is simply their profession.
Either way, they remain remarkably resistant to enlightenment.
He he – yes, the tax office can be quite insisting. For that reason, it was also a surprise to me, after some time of not working in Denmark (while living in Sweden), that I had to apply for being allowed to again pay tax there. And in Sweden, I had to apply for being allowed to pay tax of the salary, my Estonian company paid out to me. There's no automatic right to become their target – but when you're in, they won't let you out again without a fight :)
About how the world sees me: yes, it is a genuine, but unfulfilled wish, or dream, I have, that people will care to understand me better - and understand other people better as well, as I see how this is a general phenomenon.
But I grow further and further away from that dream coming true, often feeling that I really do move away from the villagers, like you describe the Hermite does. I tend to believe, though, that they are not all just staying at the same spot – they are also moving, but from a distance, they still look close to each other. Each of them, however, may feel similar to me – that they have moved away from the flock.
This way, we can all become more and more isolated. The way to improve on it is, in my extremely naïve way of thinking, that we, who at least see that this is happening, will spend some time and energy on trying to find each other – to make a "global village" of people who are not identical but at least recognize each others' wish, need, and right to keep developing and still be considered part of the world society.
The trend to push out and ghost people who seem to be drifting a bit away from the norm isn't healthy. Neither for anyone directly involved, nor for the society as a phenomenon. I have heard how such as ants are careful to kill and get rid of individuals who stop behaving like the flock, but I have also heard how new research points at ants actually being much more individualistic than previously attributed – as many as 30% of them at any time are not doing any useful work, but are pretending to do so, making them much more similar to a human society than I guess most people would willingly admit.
A world society that respects the individual rights will, of course, also respect that someone prefers more solitude, or being able to sit on the edge of society, studying it and thinking about life, society, eternity, or whatever.
I don't think we are there at all. We are not as free and flexible as the ants, really. The ants still get something to eat, a place to live, and the backup of a society, even if they are temporarily not performing any real work – they still belong. That's where humans still have something to learn. Also, if an ant is "born" into a society, it doesn't have to prove its value, it automatically belongs there, and the society will accept the responsibility for keeping it alive.
I like that image of the Hermite, and I actually have felt something like that more and more often during the last years. I know that I no longer fit in with all the same people, in all the same situations, as I previously was with and in – but I also wonder if it ever was so, or if I just wanted to believe it. If they didn't feel that I beloned, then maybe I didn't? If I didn't feel that their worlds could inspire me, then maybe I had just moved, mentally, to a different place?
Looking for a tribe becomes complicated then, because there isn't any. It can take a while to understand and accept that – followed by that period of confusion that comes from the forever ruminating question: "what then, if not that?"
The splinters, as I indicated in the answer before (previous level), was a cubist expression, so to speak, being the image people had of me, and me seeing that image, meaning that I also understood that it could be an image of me. Even if I saw myself as unsplintered, I had to relate to the perspective of others not seeing the same.
"Failure" is also cubist. I can't ignore the fact that people seeing me as a failure, like in the example with making my own company, will make them treat me as a failure, eventually causing that failure to become the reality. Same thing as the fatalism the Swedish robots step into when seeing someone in trouble. It's a bit like a gardener removing mis-grown plants, rather than seeing the beauty in what they have become. Like the blacksmith decides when the sword is a sword, the gardener decides when a plant looks correct – and society, and its members, decide when a person is a failure. A person can choose to ignore that verdict, but it is not easy to fight against while staying part of the society – and them, the Hermite way is the way to go, or something that from the villagers' point of view is similar. In fact, they will throw you out to the wolfs, making this the only chance you have.
We become wiser from that treatment, but not necessarily happier.
You're not a ghost. I see you.
Thanks, I trust you :)
In your stories, people who are closer to death than to life see ghosts. I know that from people I have known in that situation, so I tend to take it as fact, not just a literary convenience. But I also feel that those who are very much alive feel pleasure in treating others as ghosts.
Different kinds of ghosts, I suppose, but with similar outcome for the one in question. The 2-dimensional treatment is part of it. The wish to remove the "annoyance" is another. The lack of including them in life is a third, and the worst.