A lesson from the ice
“This business kills the part of life that is essential… The part that has nothing to do with business.”
There is a scene at the end of The Big Short, my favourite movie, where Michael Burry writes to his investors announcing that he must close down the fund. He has finally been proven right, but a part of him is broken.
"For the past two years, my insides have felt like they're eating themselves."
The temperature was -36°C. I never had heard the ice so loud and violent. The sharp thundering you couldn’t imagine. The vibrations of the ice travelled into my body from my tripod and camera. I felt a crack form under my feet in real time.
Each rumble sent shivers up my body and made my heart beat more noticably, but I was standing in the middle of a frozen lake, on ice I had no idea the thickness of. Centimetres of snow covered the ice, and for hours before the aurora covered the sky, it was just in starlight. The power of nature was overwhelming, and the beauty of a moment was strong, but there was something much more too.
I didn’t for a moment have any fight or flight. No instinct to even move. The ice would be what it would be, and I would just let it, and take from it what beauty I could. I was in the middle of it, the literal middle, and I had no control, and it actually felt really good. Like something I needed. A broken soul, reaching maybe just a place of acceptance.
