Two words were deposited into my vocabulary bank toward the end of last year:
Neophilia – a love or enthusiasm for the new and novel
Biophilia – a love of life and the living world
They seem to be opposing concepts – one centered around that which is new and maybe even fleeting. The other focused on that which has existed for eons, and will continue to grow and thrive well beyond anyone’s time on this earth.
So what does it mean when a neophyte like myself begins to become a biophile? Can I call myself either, knowing that I may only have a mild case of both? I love the new, but I know how to commit. I have a deep and growing sense of connection with nature, but I still live in the city and am addicted to plastic. Can I straddle both, or does the temporality of one and permanence of the other mean I have to choose a side?
I think what draws me alike to the exhilaration of new things, and the comfort of nature’s constancy, is that both are unfamiliar. In both circumstances, I approach not knowing much, feeling like I need to earn my place or have something to prove. My challenge is to recognize that what I need to prove myself to is not to people or a field or a society, but to a situation or an environment. It helps me recognize that, living in a world that has existed for billions of years, all of us are neophytes. And even the most urban of us dwellers ultimately breathe air and drink water. We could all be neophytes and biophiles.
But so many of us go through this world resist change and fight nature. We enter unfamiliar situations with fear rather than awe, and so many of us have been raised to equate dirt with dirty. In the past year I’ve been lucky enough to spend time in rainforests and deserts, mountains and the ocean. What draws me to the mysterious forms I encounter is that same obsession with newness that often sets me racing toward the latest release or product or task, rather than just sitting with what has always been.
The challenge now is to embrace the part of both philias that I’ve failed to mention thus far – love. My neophilia has introduced me to so many concepts and issues, some that can be summed up as distractions that last less than a week, and others that stuck to me and have come to define me. I’m not sure if I can force my new infatuation with nature to be love, but like a good neophyte I do my best to be completely open.
