I’ve received over 60 different emotions so far for the National Parks of Emotion project, and the emotion I’ve received the most submissions about so far is not surprising at all.
The National Park of Uncertainty, Lucian, 2021
Uncertainty was neck and neck with anxiety, but I just ran a small workshop with students at the Orchard Lyceum School in Toronto and uncertainty pulled ahead. (As an aside, what they did was amazing—kids of course are creative and brilliant and imagine their parks in totally unexpected ways. Exhibit A is the image above, which was made by a 10-year-old. I mean, wow.)
Of course, those two emotions go hand in hand. Uncertainty breeds anxiety, there’s no doubt about it. It will be interesting to see the similarities between those two parks as they get fleshed out. I imagine the parks as side-by-side, or maybe they overlap. I think there are probably exits from the National Park of Uncertainty that seamlessly meld with the entrance to the National Park of Anxiety, so that you don’t even realize that you’re in a new place.
What’s interesting about uncertainty to me is that anxiety doesn't have to be the only response to it (although it’s important to say that if what you’re uncertain about is whether you’ll be able to feed your family or have a roof over your head, or if you’re particularly vulnerable to the virus, or any number of circumstances that makes your situation precarious, that is a different story.) I’m talking about the kind of uncertainty that you can handle, you just don’t know what’s coming.
In so many ways the pandemic has been about practicing how to live with uncertainty. It still feels very uncomfortable, and it’s not a place I like to be. But I’ve found that despite my planning nature, I’m slightly better at dealing with it now than I was a year ago. Last spring it felt tortuous not knowing when my kids were going back to school, what bad news the next week would bring, having no idea what the summer would look like.
Now, as I look ahead again, I still feel upset when I think about not knowing when I’m going to see my parents, friends, family again, or when things will go back to “normal,” whatever that might look like, but I’ve accepted it a little more. This extended period of uncertainty has highlighted the fact that certainty is an illusion in the first place. Very Buddhist, which is not surprising, as the whole project was inspired by a meditation.
All of this is to tell you why I started with Uncertainty as the first National Park of Emotion you can visit on its own web page. I’m using StoryMaps, a platform for digital storytelling that incorporates maps and geography:
The National Park of Uncertainty
The page is a work in progress. After all, we’re in the process of documenting and describing this park together! I’ll be adding to it when I open submissions again soon, playing with ideas and mediums there. (You’ll notice some video I made of the park, inspired by what’s come in so far. More about that soon too.) I’ll also be adding more parks on StoryMaps as I go along. It’s a fun way to share the research.
Now that I think of it, I like that I’m starting with the National Park of Uncertainty, because there’s a lot of uncertainty I have with the project itself, too. I know intellectually that uncertainty is in the nature of the creative process, but that still doesn’t make it easy. How will it evolve? How am I going to reach more people? What will work artistically? Will I be able to juggle everything? And, and…
I think I’ll get back to practicing just sitting in this park again. This bench looks good.