Tales from the north
A lesson from the ice
“This business kills the part of life that is essential… The part that has nothing to do with business.”
There is a scene at the end of The Big Short, my favourite movie, where Michael Burry writes to his investors announcing that he must close down the fund. He has finally been proven right, but a part of him is broken.
"For the past two years, my insides have felt like they're eating themselves."
The temperature was -36°C. I never had heard the ice so loud and violent. The sharp thundering you couldn’t imagine. The vibrations of the ice travelled into my body from my tripod and camera. I felt a crack form under my feet in real time.
Each rumble sent shivers up my body and made my heart beat more noticably, but I was standing in the middle of a frozen lake, on ice I had no idea the thickness of. Centimetres of snow covered the ice, and for hours before the aurora covered the sky, it was just in starlight. The power of nature was overwhelming, and the beauty of a moment was strong, but there was something much more too.
I didn’t for a moment have any fight or flight. No instinct to even move. The ice would be what it would be, and I would just let it, and take from it what beauty I could. I was in the middle of it, the literal middle, and I had no control, and it actually felt really good. Like something I needed. A broken soul, reaching maybe just a place of acceptance.
"People want an authority to tell them how to value things, but they choose this authority not based on facts or results. They choose it because it seems authoritative and familiar."
The road back
Everyone has always said in some way or another, that when you make your love your work, everything changes.
It is not easy for me to remember back to about 18 months ago. It was a time when I didn’t want to even go to see the aurora. Yet the aurora has represented the strongest love in my life for almost 15 years.
A few weeks after this government locked down, I went to see the aurora, to see if I could find any internal peace, to just take my mind away from constant worry, anxiety and frustration in every moment.
But I couldn’t even do that.
Every moment for that couple hours was just a reminder of everything I was losing. The aurora became a representation of my vulnerability, my loss, my heartbreak, my loneliness both as a business and as a person, a representation of how in the blink of an eye, I could have everything taken away. The pure love, peace and wonder it had represented, the dream it had given me, for over a decade before, all of it, was gone.
Insecurity - if it is deep within ourself, our relationships, our financial picture, or food supply, has to be one of the most horrific feelings we can experience. But to lose such a love, in some ways, I am sure it is worse.
The aurora never lost her beauty. I had stopped seeing it in her.
Perhaps it’s just that time soothes everything
This night is not the first night I’ve been back under the aurora. It may be the first night I have been back with the aurora and felt overwhelmingly a sense of wonder, of freedom, of peace even, and genuine thrill.
Nothing is materially better now than then, but internally, it feels as though something has shifted. It’s almost as if I’ve reunited, or at least walked the first steps of reuniting, with my first love.
