Above: A still image from “The Quiet Earth” (1985)

Lately it’s been dark here. A dark time of year, a dark political era…hell, I am afraid I could just go on and on about darkness!

Everybody’s got their ways of coping with this, whether that’s done by the automatic / instinctive side of the personality, or in a more conscious way.

On the conscious side, one thing that reliably helps me out in dark times is engaging with the personal hobbies and interests that seem to call out to me for attention.

Personal Interests are Kinda Lit

This topic by itself has become a huge interest of mine over the years. I like to study the way our personal interests can guide us through life in a mysteriously helpful way. They often do this through symbolic language.

Our personal interests tend to bring light into the dark corners of our lives, if given proper attention. And even if they don’t seem directly related to “resolving issues in global politics” or “dealing with that one coworker”, they often do relate to those things, somehow. I’m often surprised to find just how direct the connection actually is!

People usually talk about “engagement with personal interests” as something that disconnects us from the broader world, for good or bad…but my experiences also seem to point out that this is quite the opposite in a lot of ways.

I believe there is a strong, symbiotic relationship between those two realms: Out there, and in here.

Getting Gripped (by an Interest)

Related, one of the techniques that’s seized me lately works a lot like this:

1. Get excited about something. Get sucked into it! (Wow, this movie, or wow, this book! Or hobby, or whatever it is…)
2. Identify that new world and its energy, as a specific type of view on things, or a specific approach to things. More on this below.
3. Live through that world—think about your life using the tools and viewpoints from that world.

Some of this process comes from my training in Jungian-oriented topics, and some from various corners of personality theory.

But, this past weekend, one of those excitements snuck up and gripped me something good. And I wanted to share how that worked out, mostly to review, but also in case it can help somebody else.

Roll Tape

This time, it was The Quiet Earth, an ’80s movie that grabbed me once again, and sucked me in. It’s definitely one of my favorite films.

Independent, plucky, unique, and deep, it’s also everything that doesn’t describe me on the average lazy Sunday.

In the movie, the main character wakes up to find that he’s the only person left alive. On the entire planet. This is the result of a scientific experiment in which he took part: Project Flashlight.

It soon becomes clear that this person bears some responsibility for ending up completely isolated, maybe even for killing almost everyone on the planet.

There is a tremendous moral burden on this character, but he’s also just barely realizing that he’s part of a broader, selfish, shortsighted, killing system…and now…

…what to do about it?

This Kind of Topic Helps Me Out Sometimes

Why this movie? Why this approach?

Personally, I didn’t pick this interest. But if I had to guess why my subconscious mind found it interesting: It often really helps me to look at the world from this kind of viewpoint: “Oh no, what’s happened? Things are so weird and disconcerting lately. And what can I do about it?”

Solving novel problems is one way to look at this, and that is one of the skills I have worked hard on in my professional practice in recent years. So, that connection makes sense to me.

Here are some more specific examples why this helps:

First, I notice that I get more energy if I decide that stuff is really weird lately. lol. It’s more fun to look at the world this way, for me. It opens up the imagination and anyway, my mind has always been naturally attuned to single out “something weird that’s going on.”

Second: “Maybe I had a part in it, but let’s find out.” I’m a character-motivated person. I like to think about my role in things. There’s some personal-discovery and maybe also a person redemption arc here, as is usually true for all of us. One of us, is all of us.

Within each of us is every philosophical perspective, doing some sort of battle against another perspective from time to time. Simple, or fancy? Pragmatic, or sensitive to broader issues? Looking back, or looking forward? Focused on the now, or lost in thought?

When one of those perspectives wins, another perfectly good perspective tends to lose. And that can be really, really unfortunate, because they’re also a full palette of helpful tools and techniques.

Third, I feel kind of alone in dealing with the problems at hand…but that’s also a strength. I mean, there’s always some clear need to link together, if possible, to solve huge problems in society. But there’s also a separate strength in looking at problems that only seem to affect us.

(Eventually, maybe we can even publish the problems in a way that helps us link up with others, so whether this “I’m alone in dealing with this” is a good thing is also an open, process-related question and a matter to sort out over time.)

And finally, I get the idea that I can probably make some sense of the problem at hand, but I need to watch closely and make observations. To activate some sensitivity, this powerful tool we can use to analyze and tackle problems.

How it worked out

Translating a personal interest, or a fantasy world, into personal perspectives and tools seems to be a really helpful practice so far.

And I have to say I love the advantages of the scientific angle:

1. Patience is rewarded. This is not an action movie. Think through the problem well.
2. Unique perspectives are welcome. Again, we need so many different tools in life. You never know what can help.
3. We embrace the fact that dark things can happen. Embracing darkness means that we don’t try to only look on the bright side of everything, because sometimes this is just the same as blinding ourselves. With closed-off perspectives, we close off access to many important problem-solving tools. And darkness is usually just “depth in disguise.”

In the event, I took up my notebook and drew out a pleasant, organized, scientific grid layout.

Then at the top of the paper, I wrote: PROJECT FLASHLIGHT LOG (a reference to the movie), merging the movie theme with my own inner world.

I worked through general descriptions: Something’s off. What will I try now? What do I need to do?

This soon included a little to-do list, on the side. “Drink some water.” Never leave out the mundane stuff!

But also: “Take crucial measurements.”

For me, this is a thing I do—I measure my personal energy, how I’m feeling. It’s an activity I do while I’m journaling.

What Does It Mean?

In the end…I moved ahead in that particular movie-mindset, as the scientist of who-knows-what-is-going-on.

I decided to do some very specific things next, as experiments, and I did those things, or scheduled them.

And on a Sunday, no less! Hah.

I don’t want to overstate this, but it really just helps to move ahead. For most of us, that’s most of what we need on any given day! The feeling of forging ahead in life doesn’t really have to be that fancy.

And the tools we use to move ahead may also seem fancy, but it’s important to realize: Even if they just help us keep going, that’s usually plenty of help, and who’s to say if that’s fancy, if it just works!

Still, everything’s dark, and I hate it, ugh

These are, in many ways, dark times. For all of us.

Tracking that, and managing its effect on our lives, can be very hard. Attention to global issues can easily cascade into dark fallout in our personal lives. This is generally true, the less-conscious we are of a need to find our own way of solving important problems in our lives, even the dark ones.

Circumstances seem dire, and the tools available to us even seem dire sometimes. Even scrolling on a social media site these days feels like flirting with dangerous mental conditions, inviting some new level of anxiety, or depression, or obsession with some disquieting thing in a disconcerting way.

So, in this case, recognizing and seizing a motivating personal interest, or personal fantasy, if I can call it that, is a very clear, straightforward win.

Every global problem is also a personal problem, and movement on either end of that chain is helpful.

(And maybe for another time: What the hell has gone wrong with social media, anyway?)

That’s it for now everybody! May you also find some weird thing in your life that’s really interesting and ideally, helpful. :-) —Marc

Video: The Midnight – The Equaliser (Not Alone)

Filed in: Movies & Films /5/ | Interests /112/ | Control /112/ | Global Issues /5/ | Therapeutic Practice /146/ | Depression /13/