Recently, I finished a book entitled The Immense Journey by the late Loren Eiseley, an American naturalist and professor of anthropology. This book and the manner in which it came into my life legitimately made me believe more in the existence of a higher power. more than just the content of the novel, but the chance-like circumstances by which I found it, have stirred many fascinating feelings.
I will most likely do a different post about the content of the book and why I think it might be one of the most profound works of scientific/storytelling/evolutionary history/philosophical rumination I have read in my 23 years on Earth. I’m no literary expert, but I have read a fair amount of books and in my opinion, very few hold a candle to the beautiful simplicity of Eiseley’s observations of the natural world. The fact that this book came into my life purely by chance (or did it?) has sent me into a bit of a spiral, to be honest.
I found this book while in a vintage store with a friend of mine. they had a deal going on that was 3 books for $20. my friend had found one, I had found one, and together we were trying to find a third book to fill out the discount. I was thumbing through the spines of these fossilized, musty smelling books when I stumbled upon one which had a kooky looking monkey on the front cover. I read the cover, saw the visually appealing dusty blue and tangerine color combination, and I was sold.
“naturalist?” I thought.
“why are there so many guys named Loren?” I pondered.
now, I hold two battling thoughts simultaneously in my mind:
- Wowza, I can’t believe this book has become so profoundly important to me in such a short amount of time. Who would have thought that a narrative, anecdotal novel on evolution and the great struggle of mankind against his own ego would just be on the shelf for me to pick up! I sure am lucky I thought the monkey on the cover looked cool, or I may have never picked it up. Neat!
- God put this novel in my life for a reason. It was designed from the start that I would read this book and it would expose parts of my soul which are exhausted by worldly pressures and self servitude. There are crucial and yet-explored aspects of the human experience that I had (and still have) little exposure to, and God ordained the circumstances which made it possible for me to find this book in the corner of this dusty little bookshelf on that orange Saturday afternoon. I found it at exactly the right time, on exactly the right day, so it could give me exactly what I was lacking.
I’m well aware that this sounds nuts, lol
The book ultimately left me with many more questions than answers, and a plethora of additions to my reading list.
Even though I don’t generally consider myself a very fearful person, there is one thing that terrifies me to my core: the fact that I will never have all the answers. Yet, simultaneously, I am fully aware and feel quite content with the fact that I will never have all of the answers.
Doomed, I feel, to my cruelly and essentially human inability to know all. Saved, I am, by the innately, sweetly human understanding that we cannot know all.
A fool I feel for not knowing enough; empowered I feel for trying despite.
Cursed we are with logic and reason and wickedly capable minds; to be blessed with the ability to struggle in spite of doubt which frames my worldview.
Because not only did we create the abyss in which we must wade, we also created and conceptualized our salvation.
It’s gotten to the point where I am just exhausted by pleasure-seeking self servitude. It feels as though my soul is bloated and stuffed to the brim with this, that, and the other. Very limited intentional practice of restraint, mindfulness, and deliberate exploration of freeing myself of this grotesque swell.
But the least I can do is try. Eiseley has several passages about precisely this concept, but he refers to it as the great human “reaching out”, which is a very pleasing term to my ears. The ‘reaching out’ being humanity’s most instinctive and powerful determination to progress, against all the absurdities of both natural and unnatural life.
I know this is a very disjointed, rambly post but it is pretty indicative of my current internal dialogue. I’ll close with a quote from The Immense Journey.
“Yet whenever I see a frog’s eye low in the water warily ogling the shoreward landscape, I always think inconsequentially of those twiddling mechanical eyes that mankind manipulated nightly from a thousand observatories. Someday, with a telescopic lens an acre in extent, we are going to see something not to our liking, some looming shape outside there across the great pond of space.
Whenever I catch a frog’s eye, I am aware of this, but I do not find it depressing. I stand quite still and try hard not to move or lift a hand since it would only frighten him. And standing thus it finally comes to me that this is the most enormous extension of vision of which life is capable: the projection of itself into other lives. This is the lonely, magnificent power of humanity. It is, far more than any spatial adventure, the supreme epitome of the reaching out.”
Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey
turning the paige 