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Longstorming my way through Old Age

I heard a new word the other day; it seemed particularly mysterious at the time: longstorming. It’s a word I’m pretty sure I’d heard before but I was in a lineup for a bus and didn’t want to show my declining intellect to the crowd of students in front of me by asking for clarification. So, I stored it in a file no longer easily accessible with my aging neurons, and totally forgot about it until it blinked at me from an essay in a phone app. [i]

The word is an unusual neologism which I found particularly appropriate for my accustomed long daily walks in the forest. There, the weight of current affairs, and worries about world political upheavals seem to melt away -or at least shuffle to the back of the long line of priorities. The idea of longstorming, as I have come to understand it, is to think long term -way long term: aeons in the past, or in a future where ‘Now’ has not yet appeared; it is where Awe lives; where ‘contemplating natural splendour seems to put us in a headspace that lets us reflect on our short lives as ephemeral organisms dwelling on a fragile planet floating in a vast cosmos.’  Whoaa…

It is the act of purposely not dwelling on the problems pressing upon us, but instead, thinking about possible events like ‘the creation of new species, the movement of tectonic plates’, or ‘the unexpected asteroid that collided with Earth 66 million years ago’. It is, in short, the mental practice of daydreaming by wandering, mentally, to distant places and times.

And what we imagine need not even be scientifically accurate. ‘The simple act of temporally extending the intellect across time is enough to change how we experience the here and now.’ In other words I don’t have to study before I enter a forest trail to experience the immensity of what the past and future may contain; I can simply wonder as I wander (sorry).

There are a few constraints to longstorming, however -to wit, one’s companion. You have to choose with whom to go into the forest; especially if they want to talk about themselves, unload their problems, or worse still, confess to something you’d rather not hear.  I thought Sally would be safe, although she fancied herself an intellect, and mercilessly dissected whatever I said.

Last week, for example, she texted me that her partner was threatening to leave her and she needed to talk about it. “Why don’t we go for a walk along your favourite trail in the forest…?”

Her ellipsis was worrisome; it was not an invitation to longstorm, I was pretty sure. Still, she was my friend and, who knows, maybe I could turn her ideas into a mini longstorm; in fact, maybe that was just what she needed.

We met at the trailhead (she had to drive there; I chose to walk) and before the branches even covered us, she started talking, explaining, exonerating herself before I had fully grasped the situation. I sensed that, far from just getting stuff off her chest, what she really sought was absolution from me. I mean I didn’t even know her partner.

“Janine was always upfront with me; she accused me of being too imaginative for her -too show-offy…” She thought about it for a moment. “I mean it all started when she accused me of pretending to be a lateral thinker, when what she usually wanted –needed, apparently- was an honest and kind relationship, not a pseudo-insightful one.” She suddenly furrowed her brow and stared at me so she could finish her thought before I did the male thing and tried to solve the issue for her.

“So,” she continued, “I reassured her that Nietzsche rejected the notion of objective, absolute truth, and argued that all knowledge is a matter of interpretation from a specific perspective.” Sally just sighed, and capped it off with a theatrical shrug. “See what I mean?” she said and then shook her head. “I was just thinking about how Nietzsche might address her problem.”

I thought about that for a few minutes (never pretend to have the answer without a noticeable pause). We were crossing a little wooden bridge over a gurgling creek when Sally stopped and stared at me mid-span. “We’ve walked all this way and you haven’t said a thing, G!”

“I was just thinking about how awful that made you feel when Janine didn’t seem to understand.” I had to say something, eh?

Sally stamped her foot in exasperation at my unhelpful CBT words, and the wood creaked and trembled on the little bridge; it was time for me to offer more help. “Two people walking across a bridge is actually two people walking across two bridges…” I thought the ellipsis was a clever addition.

Sally’s face scrunched up. “What’s that supposed to mean, G? That Janine and I never even cross the same bridge mentally? That’s so stupid!”

I just shrugged; I’m used to Sally. “Did I ever tell you what my grampa once told me about the house he built?” I said. “He always listened to the wooden beams; he’d cut them himself from trees on his property, and claimed the wood in the house was still alive.” She just stared at me as if she had no idea what I was talking about.

“His wooden house was alive; this wooden bridge is alive,” I explained. Although she kept staring at me, shaking her head, I couldn’t forget what my grandfather had meant. So I tried it again: “Do you think this bridge can sense the forest? It’s one of their members after all. Maybe more is going on around us than we can sense…”

She thought about my words for a moment and her frown gradually disappeared; in fact she seemed curious. “You mean that some of the forest would react as a unit, sort of like a committee acting as the spokesman…?”  She suddenly giggled; “…I mean as the spokestree? Or would only one or two of the more cerebral trees, sense their commonality with the bridge?”

I smiled and actually hugged Sally for understanding my flight of ideas. “You know, maybe Janine was actually complimenting you, Sal. Maybe she actually admires your ability to think outside the box; or is jealous of it…”

Sally slowly disentangled herself from my arms, and a huge smile appeared on her face. “You see why I love to go on walks with you G? You always seem to know the right things to say.”

I winked (although I never wink). I didn’t tell her I’d been longstorming, though…

[i] https://psyche.co/ideas/do-you-find-the-21st-century-overstimulating-try-longstorming

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