✯ MY WORK & THE WORLD // A NOTE ON PURPOSE ✯

When I studied ancient history, I was fascinated by the Greek Dark Age. A period of several centuries when all writing ceased and the success of the Bronze Age seems to have disappeared. Scholars have thought virtually nothing happened during this time — until now.

Recent research is exploring the possibility that the Dark Age wasn’t as dark as we think. That perhaps, in the face of threats both natural and human, sophisticated prehistoric societies did not disappear or end, but rather crouched closer to the ground and waited out the storm. The Greeks may have stopped keeping records or building elaborate structures, but they are still there, in the archaeological record, tending to the hearth of their longhouses. I imagine them, carrying the torch of a past golden age through the stories they told over firelight; stories that would become Homer’s Iliad. Through a handful of burials so rich and elaborate, they wink to a level of sophistication, depth and understanding that otherwise seems totally lost.

All as if to say — we remember how great we can be, how grand; but for this moment, we choose to be small, and quiet, and close to the earth, waiting for whatever is to come.

Sometimes I think we may be in one of those Dark Ages now. But rather than seeing it as a total end, maybe we are being asked to put our collective ego to one side and get quiet. To pause, on a massive scale, and return to the methods and ways that have sustained our kind for centuries. To plant ourselves firmly, take root someplace deep in the silent dirt, gestating slowly until we emerge into the light again.

But not now. Not yet. For the moment, maybe less is more. Maybe all the strife we are seeing and experiencing is asking us to return to a more basic existence, of sustenance and survival and simplicity. Maybe this is what will remind us of our humanity, whatever that means — intelligence and insignificance. Potential and futility.

A return to craftsmanship, regenerative agriculture, sustainability is already underway. I speculate that this growing appetite for the old ways is what underpins it; the need to step off our pedestal as a species and spend some time — a few years, a generation, a century, who knows — reconnecting to a way of living and being that is more human, so we can prime ourselves and our children for whatever leap we’ll make next.

My tiny piece of this grand puzzle might be to find and tell stories that show us how fulfilling, enriching, masterful, beautiful, and impressive a life closer to the ground can be in its own right. Exploring the possibility that maybe this next chapter in our history is one we can look forward to, in some respect, and yield something valuable from. Craft and food, landscape and culture. Our very roots. This is what I believe will sustain us in the stretch of time, however long, that is to come.