Heat-Moon no doubt went through some hard times. When you lose your job and your wife it is only natural to think that your world has fallen apart. But how should people deal with a collapsed world? For Heat-Moon, the solution was to embark on a journey.
My question is: By “turning to the eye” and leaving your problems behind can you really get over them? By distracting yourself can you really move on with your life?
My gut instinct is no.
I believe that in order to really move on you have to allow time to internalize and feel the anger or sadness. The emotions you feel allow you to get closure and gain a new perspective. However, one of my classmates made a good point.
“I believe that it is very helpful and almost necessary for me to step away from the situation for a while to think about it before I begin to deal with it. For me, it never helped simply jumping into solutions without taking a step back and thinking about a solution.”
I think there is validity to that point. When your world collapses I do think you need time to come up with a plan. After all, the best way to gain a new perspective is to step back and look at your life. By definition, that IS gaining a new perspective.
Although I don’t think Heat-Moon’s decision to “turn to the eye” and distract himself is a great idea, I do believe that the journey is an effective way to gain a new perspective.
So I have come to a solution: Heat-Moon’s “soul searching” journey is not necessarily an escape, but an opportunity to gain a new view on life. All our lives we are told to face our problems, but Heat-Moon may have gotten it right by taking a step back.
1 comment:
Heat-Moon decided to get out of the way of life, to let chance take him where it would and just be open to what he could learn. He decided that if he stayed home, he would just dwell on his problems, which never solves anything. But what he did was difficult, and often depressing in its own way, as he was really lonely a lot of the time. Not to have friends around made him have to seek out strangers, and ask them about THEIR lives, since he didn't want to talk about his own. And that's how he learned new perspectives. That theme of getting away from "I" is in the Miz alice part too, isn't it, when she talks about the islanders becoming "I" landers.
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