The Lost Man

This writing exercise was suggested to me by a friend who found this video compelling. Watch the video, come to your own point of view, and then, if you are curious, read my interpretation below which is based only on one viewing.

The Lost Man

A man is lost in the English countryside. He points out, "you would think it would be impossible to get lost in this day and age," this reveals he is a product of our tech-possessed time.

As he wanders, he comes across a snail. Snail medicine is protective, as evidenced by the shell. The snail has a hard exterior protecting an animal that is soft and has no other sort of protection. The snail shell resembles the cochlea canal of the inner ear which symbolizes hearing and the man can communicate with the snail.

The snail tells the man he can guide him home. The snail gets the man out of the green fields of the English country side into a dark wood. Suddenly a wounded fox appears on the road, beaten and bloody. The fox growls at the man. The man is afraid.

Fox medicine represent the power of invisibility but I do not see that as apt in this case. Here I think technological man has lost himself and the fox represents the ego. The ego is much maligned in our day but its true function is that of trauma response. The ego only comes into being when we become traumatized. Its job is to protect us.

But technological man is so far removed from himself that his, has spent so much time beating up his own ego, that, when he confronts it, he fears it.

The man finally sleeps under a tree. The snail stays for a while but has to leave, I had one theory that the snail was like the Christian Holy Spirit, but once you get the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit stays with you, even following you into prison and other dark places. So, in this case, it appears the snail helped all it could and at the same time, used the man to get a lift.

The fox dies and while the man sleeps, it purifies and decays and goes back to the earth. This represents in some way the split that caused the ego is healing and so the man wakes up but he is so used to the spit in his psyche, healing feels like loneliness instead of completeness, which it actually is.

No doubt the man will follow the snails advice. He has already found his way home but simply doesn’t recognize it because he had different expectations of what “home” was.