Finding Your Howl

Jonathan Flaum addresses two stories in his piece "Finding Your Howl" (found here: http://changethis.com/manifesto/show/51.01.YourHowl ). His first story introduces the concept that everyone has their own individual voice they must find. He presents this with a story of a wolf that must learn how to howl instinctively since it was never taught to him. This segues into the second story he had heard in fifth grade. One of his classmates wrote a story that reflects life in a different sense: A tiger plans his escape from his captivity in a zoo, but repeatedly finds himself in a new cage. Despite how many times he attempts to escape, he still winds up captive. This is reflective to human nature in the sense that we are what we make of ourselves, and just trying to escape our problems on a direct level doesn't necessarily means those problems won't come back. We need to analyze our problems and figure out how to accept them before simply running away from them.

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - H.P. Lovecraft from "The Call of Cthulhu".

This quote happens to be my particular favorite. The gothic-horror fiction author H.P. Lovecraft was referencing how the human mind often can not gather all that it's learned or seen into one coherent and fixed thought or idea. This reflects the second story Flaum was retelling as well as inspires me on a creative level. It reflects the story of the tiger because often times we, as humans, will ignore what has happened in the past and continue to repeat an action, expecting different results (isn't that the definition for insanity?). This speaks to me on a creative level because it is essentially stating that I will need to get creative if I want to keep sane. Lovecraft implied that humans' natural-bred insanity is "the most merciful thing in the world" because it keeps them ignorant and unaware of what the real problem is. At the same time he is making the statement facetiously because it's a shame that people can not simply see what's right in front of them. A little self-searching would do a lot of us some good.