Introduction

I had this dream recently where I was watching a man walk across a high mountain range, everything covered in snow and fog, and no sense of anything beyond the immediate vicinity of the guy.

It was one of those dreams that had a feeling like it wasn't from this time, or even from me, but that it was something like a memory of a past life, or a recollection passed down in my genes.

So, I saw the guy in a heavy fur coat and I saw this barren, rocky, snow covered wasteland around him, and I just got the feeling that that was all there was.

Anywhere.

Like, it wasn't so much that the fog or distance obscured my ability to see anything, it was just that everything that ever was or could be was contained in this de facto snow globe, a world that was just super limited in scope.

And as the guy walked on over the snow and rocks he saw a light in a cave only a few hundred meters away, an orange light, like the light of a fire.

Well, he was cold and it was getting dark, so he walked towards the light and he saw an empty cave, with a lit fire inside and boxes of just, junk, stuff: papers, wooden stuff, random objects.

But he sat by the fire as the wind picked up and he was alright. He sat, and he slept, and when the fire was about to go out he just threw some paper on it, or some bits of wood, and he was warm enough, and the cave was cosy, and he could see the wild wind and snow outside, but it couldn't touch him.

He didn't want to leave because, well, he knew there was a fire in the cave, but was there anything outside worth risking the walk for? He'd obviously get lost pretty fast out in the snow, and maybe this was the only fire in the whole world?

So he sat for a long, long time, and he burned everything, even his clothes eventually, to keep himself warm.

And then there was nothing left to burn.

And in the time he was looking at the fire, thinking about what happens when you're finally out of fuel, and you're finally about to run out of light and warmth, then an idea struck him, an idea so obvious that it just seemed that you couldn't even question the sense of it.

When there's no more left to offer the fire, then all you have to offer is yourself.

And so he focused on the fire while it was dwindling out, and he didn't feel afraid, just... he was just there, it was fact, as mundane as any fact.

But as he watched the fire die he also watched a new fire come to life.

A small, dim white fire popped up from the ashes, a fire that burned from the thoughts in his mind, which he fed to the fire.

But his thoughts were always flowing, and so the fire was always burning, and they dim light and that sliver of heat could keep him just warm enough and just aware enough to survive.

And so he fed the fire, and the fire fed him, and maybe one day he'd run out of things to think about, but not for a long, long time.

I thought about this dream for a while, and at first I was like "Hey, that's a bit like Dark Souls."

In order to stave off the end of the Age of Fire, and the assumed eternal darkness that follows, they need people with extremely powerful souls to feed themselves to the First Flame. Same symbolism; they don't know what happens when the fire goes out, but they know that it will, one day, just not today.

And then I was thinking that I remembered reading something a long time ago from Hindu mythology, something like "What does man have left without fire? He still has speech. And without speech? He still has thought."

I don't think I could ever find that passage ever again, but my subconscious borrowed that idea somehow and worked it into my dream, and that's cool, but it doesn't explain why the dream felt so important.

And then I thought about the dream a little bit more, and I was like "That's life though, innit?"

You're just brought into this world, and, if you're a sensitive and intelligent person, then you're just kinda dumped into a wasteland, aren't you? A libertarian nightmare where intellect is what you buy from universities and beauty is whatever they can commodify and sell, and you're just a wanderer in what might as well be an endless, barren, sunless desert of ice and snow and fog.

So you try to keep warm, to keep yourself ticking over, to stave off the depression that comes from trying to find meaning in the salt flat that is modern society, and so you throw things onto the fire: hobbies, books, holidays, sex, romance, and whatever you can find that gives you the fleeting feeling that anything matters.

And when the inevitable depression can't be staved off anymore, when there's nothing left to burn, then all you can do is just be, in yourself, and realise that the kernel that is you, that little, weak, white flame, is enough to sustain you, no matter where you are.

It's not much, but it's something.

You might say that humans weren't meant to live like this, and maybe you're right, but I don't like to truck with big questions about evolution and psychology, or, God forbid, both at once.

Nah, I'm just a dude with a little fire, sitting in a cave, and maybe there's a city just beyond the fog, or maybe there isn't, but the outcome's the same either way.