n. nervously aware how much of your self-image is based on untested assumptions about yourself—only ever guessing how you'd react to a violent threat, a sudden windfall, a huge responsibility, or being told to do something you knew was wrong.
From ring, a key element in many sagas and myths + -lorn, sorely missing. Pronounced "ring-lawrn."
n. the inability to decide how much sympathy your situation really deserves, knowing that so many people have it far worse and others far better, that some people would need years of therapy to overcome what you have, while others would barely think to mention it in their diary that day.
n. the longing to wander off your career track in pursuit of a simple life tending a small farm in a forest clearing, keeping a lighthouse on a secluded atoll, or becoming a shepherd in the mountains—which is just the kind of hypnotic diversion that allows your thoughts to make a break for it and wander back to their cubicles in the city.
German Stadtzentrum, "city center" + Pennsylvania German Rumspringa, "hop-ping around." Rumspringa is a putative tradition in which Amish teens dip their toes in modernity for a while before choosing whether to commit to the traditional way of life. Pronounced "truhm-spring-guh."
n. the fear that originality is no longer possible.
You are unique. And you are surrounded by billions of other people, just as unique as you. Each of us is different, with some new angle on the world. So what does it mean if the lives we're busy shaping by hand all end up looking the same?
We all spread out, looking around for scraps of frontier—trying to capture something special, something personal. But when you gather all our scattered snapshots side by side, the results are often uncanny. There's the same close-up of an eye, the same raindrops on a window, the same selfie in the side-view mirror.
The airplane wingtip, the pair of bare legs stretched out on a beach chair, the loopy rosette of milk in a latte. The same meals are photographed again and again. The same monuments pinched between fingers. The same waterfalls. Sunset after sunset. It should be a comfort that we're not so different, that our perspectives so neatly align. If nothing else, it's a reminder that we live in the same world. Still, it makes you wonder. How many of your snapshots could easily be replaced by a thousand identical others? Is there any value left in taking yet another photo of the moon, or the Taj Mahal, or the Eiffel Tower? Is a photograph just a kind of souvenir to prove you've been someplace, like a prefabricated piece of furniture that you happened to have assembled yourself?
It's alright if we tell the same jokes we've all heard before. It's alright if we keep remaking the same movies. It's alright if we keep saying the same phrases to each other as if they had never been said before. Even when you look back to the earliest known work of art in existence, you'll find a handprint stenciled on the wall of a cave—not just one, but hundreds overlapping, each indistinguishable from the other.
To be sure, you and I and billions of others will leave our mark on this world we've inherited, just like the billions who came before us. But if, in the end, we find ourselves with nothing left to say, nothing new to add, idly tracing outlines left by others long ago—it'll be as if we were never here at all.
This too is not an original thought. As the poet once said, "The powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse." What else is there to say? When you get your cue, you say your line.
Swedish vemod, tender sadness, pensive melancholy + Vemdalen, the name of a Swedish town, which is the kind of thing that IKEA usually borrows to give names to their products. Pronounced "vey-moh-dah-len."