Mindscape

Today my son asked me a thought provoking question. As any reader of this blog knows, I am a naturally dark and therefore often angry person. But he is just getting to the age to see that. So as I mentioned some of my negative perceptions of things, he observed that I frequently see things like that and asked what the world must look like from inside my head.

While many may find this disheartening, I am so aware of this fact about myself that I did not run from it, but replied, "It's pretty dark in here."  The question stuck with me though; how do I express it to people? What does the world look like to me? Some may paint in pictures, but I am much more capable in words, so I will try.

Like anyone, my internal landscape is varied and changes in its own seasons and weathers.  And while I am in any one of those, it necessarily colors what the others look like. So the best I can give is the current conditions and climate with your understanding that it is not always so and may be themed quite differently at another juncture.

The skies here are often grey. Clouds roll thick and mists are common, ranging to dense fogs. The terrain is rugged with crags and sharp edged stones all around. Near peaks obscure large areas of vision. Air ranges in the hot humid arena but frequently dips into chilling cold.

Never far away is the barren windswept tableland of the tough-minded where no hint of green softness breaks the flat desolation until the sky meets it. Here are the hermits and ascetics, ever trying to rid themselves of the stains and distractions of the world while ever becoming harsher and more stone-like in their bearing for all their intention toward good.

Near there is the dense Mirkwood frought with demons and every kind of rending, demoralizing creature that feasts on the despair and self-loathing of its victims. They often range outside their haunts seeking to trick, trap or drag me into their lairs. But their favorite tactic is to build paths that innocenty wend through pleasanter lands until they unexpectedly end in the terrible mirk such that the unwary traveler will suddenly find himself in their clutches.

But it isn't all that bad. Sun does shine from time to time and I encounter delicate grottos of lush moss trickling with water and speckled with shimmering flowers and dappled light. I have seen vast deep oceans as slick as glass and raging like titans. Rain is often refreshing and mercifully frequent. And there are springs in the most unlikely places; some the tiniest bubbling, others strong enough to feed streams that water green vales under clear gentle skies. Here is where I most often have four legs and a cold nose. Here is where the Shepherd lives. Though he is always about in the harsher lands where I am on two feet and never far when I try to find him, or he needs to find me.

So this is the briefest sketch of my internal continent that shapes me, colors my actions and responses, and governs my decisions and opinions. I hope it sheds some light into who I am and why I am the way I am.