An Unlived Past in Ruins

There has always been something fascinating with stories and settings that are painted in a post-apocalyptic world. The environment feels refreshing, serene, and oddly enough, it feels natural. Looking at ruined and dilapidated structures we can catch a glimpse of history. Ghosts of the past and stories of struggle layered upon bronze patinas, whiffs of decay, faint traces of melancholy, and an overarching sense of desolation over what was. Yet, they can still feel oddly deep and nostalgic for reasons I find difficult to describe in words.

Buildings that were once saturated with life, dreams, and hope now serve as empty husks for wildlife to occupy and nature to reclaim. Yet, it doesn’t seem odd to develop a sense of attachment to these things. A sense of joyous wonder and awe. Some would describe this feeling as kenopsia. To me, I would describe it as a feeling of a disconnected connectedness to history, both as an unknowing witness and as a subject to the grand march of time. A form of nostalgia and sadness to a past I never lived but I am inherently and drearily a part of.

There are two things for me that tie back to this feeling which are the Japanese aesthetic concepts of wabi-sabi and yūgen . Wabi-sabi (侘寂) dwells on the acceptance of the transience and imperfections of life. Yūgen (幽玄) is a concept that can have varied translations, but we can think of it as a deep, profound, and often indescribable emotional response toward the beauty or awe of the universe and with how we experience it. A feeling that triggers deep emotional awareness of how all things are impermanent, imperfect, and destined to be lost to the design of our iniverse.

This feeling is as dreadful as it is comforting. An awareness of how all things will eventually come and go. How the homes that were built to shelter and thrive will eventually come to ruin. How our technology will eventually act as spare parts for looters and scavengers. How paintings and photographs will become windows to the past, often with stories lost in translation or lost to an untold part of history. All the things we have done will be retold as reminders or stories for future generations to ponder. But even with this feeling of desolation, it provides a sense of hope that things can change.

Far into the future, people will discover our stories as we leave traces of our identity through objects and people we’ve interacted with - and - hopefully find meaning in our struggles. I am hopeful that with time, suffering will have dwindled in the future and people will look with the same sense of awe, wonder, and connectedness with the things that we have built and left behind, even if it may end in ruins. Only time will tell.

Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered. —T.S. Eliot