There is beauty in Heidegger’s analogy of how our minds — or more precisely, our being — can be likened to a clearing in a dense forest. Light breaks through into this space, allowing the world — a world full of objects, experiences, and phenomena — to be seen. We, as humans, are a clearing in which Being reveals itself in the light.
When the elderly lose their faculties, the forest slowly begins to reclaim what was once open. Their understanding of the world in its totality begins to break down; reality becomes ever more opaque and chaotic. As we grow old, the opening begins to lose its openness — new experiences become frightening and confusing as our cognitive faculties begin to decline.
I have sympathy for the elderly. I, too, already find myself closed off; the light no longer breaks through the leaves as relentlessly as it once did when I was a child. I sometimes wonder whether my clearing was ever that large in the first place — the world has always felt chaotic, meaningless, and fragile. I was always a sad child. Maybe I was emotionally, intellectually, socially, or even spiritually lost — unengaged with the world — even at a young age. This is my facticity.
