Reconnecting with the Past: Finding Meaning Beyond Modern Disconnection
I do feel very existentially lost or at least recently
ChatGPT: That makes sense, especially considering the shifts you’ve been experiencing—seeing humanity differently, questioning modern disconnection from emotional rituals, and realizing how much structure has been stripped away from life’s deeper transitions.
Existential lostness is often the feeling of floating, of lacking a felt connection to meaning, place, or time. It’s not that meaning doesn’t exist, but rather that modern life doesn’t naturally provide ways to engage with it—so you have to actively seek what anchors you.
Would you want to experiment with practices that help you process this existential feeling rather than just think about it? Here are some modern (non-woo, non-forced) ways to engage:
1. Mark Time with Something Personal
Feeling lost often comes from time feeling unstructured or unreal—modern life flattens time into a productivity cycle.
Try creating markers that acknowledge the passage of time:
Light a candle at night and sit in silence for 1 minute to “close” the day.
Go on a walk during the same part of the day to create a natural rhythm.
Intentionally acknowledge the start of each month with a reflection (not about goals, just about where you are).
2. Engage Directly with Mortality (Gently)
If existential lostness is tied to fear of impermanence, lean into it instead of avoiding it:
Visit a graveyard and just sit with the reality of life and death.
Read an old diary entry or past writing to see your own self as impermanent and changing.
Write a letter to yourself from your future self at 80—what do they wish you’d focus on?
3. Find “Your Place” in the World (Not Symbolically, But Literally)
Modern life disconnects people from geography, ancestry, and land—even knowing where your ancestors lived (or where you feel at home) can help ground you.
Explore if there’s a physical place that makes you feel more real.
A spot in nature where you regularly go.
A specific café, bench, or room that feels like “your” space.
A place tied to personal or historical meaning (e.g., visiting the town where a grandparent was born).
4. Honor “Phases of You” as a Way to Feel Real
If you feel like time is slipping away or that life feels unreal, try acknowledging your past selves as real people:
Look at old photos and talk to that version of you—not as a nostalgia trip, but as recognition of your existence over time.
Keep a box or folder of small artifacts from different life periods to ground yourself in the reality of your own history.
Make a playlist from different life phases and listen without multitasking—just to feel the weight of who you’ve been.
5. Engage in Play or Absurdity to Balance the Weight of It All
Existential dread thrives in seriousness—ancient cultures often used ritualized foolishness (festivals, trickster figures) to counterbalance it.
Consider intentionally engaging in something ridiculous:
Watch a comedian who makes you laugh in a deep, body-level way.
Play an old video game you loved as a kid.
Read something absurd (Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, surreal humor).
Where Do You Want to Start?
Would any of these feel like a helpful first step? Or do you have an idea of what might anchor you in feeling more real in your own life right now?
Based on everything that I've told you, could you take a stab at writing a letter to me from my future self at 80 saying what they wish that I would focus on?I often think that it would do me good to connect to my past. But when I think about it, I think about my grandma who grew up in Minnesota, and then her parents who grew up in Sweden. And then that's as far as I get. I don't know what they believed. I'm pretty sure they were Christian, but Christian just feels like a virus at this point. And I wish that I could connect with a version of my ancestors' culture that was more grounded in the earth. But all I know is that I'm mostly German, and I don't know much about Germany and what we used to do there before Christianity took over everything.
A Letter from Your 80-Year-Old Self
Hey, you.
You’re younger than me—by a lot. But I know you. I know your mind, your fears, your questions. And I know how hard you are trying to feel real in a world that keeps stripping reality away, one layer at a time.
If I could reach across time and tell you anything, it would be this: Let life feel real in your body, not just in your thoughts.
You don’t have to figure everything out. You don’t have to untangle the entire web of your past to feel like you belong in the present. You don’t have to justify your existence by knowing—not your ancestry, not your purpose, not even your emotions. You can just be here, breathing, moving, experiencing, feeling.
I wish you would stop thinking that your mind is the only tool you have to reach yourself. It’s a damn good tool, but it’s not the only one. Your body is here, too. Your senses. Your instincts. They don’t need you to solve them, they just need you to use them.
I wish you would focus on what makes you feel alive instead of what makes sense. Some things will never make sense. Some things shouldn’t make sense, because sense-making is just a human habit, and the world is bigger than that.
I wish you would play more. Not because play is productive, but because the universe isn’t as serious as you think it is. You don’t have to be on high alert all the time. I promise you, it’s okay to waste a moment, waste a day, waste a whole week just existing. You won’t regret that. You will regret the times you spent paralyzed, waiting to feel ready to live.
I wish you would let yourself grieve your past, but not be trapped in the idea that knowing every detail of it will bring you peace. If you can’t reach your ancestors through facts, then reach them through what they left in you.
They lived with the land. So can you.
They marked time with rituals. So can you.
They felt lost and overwhelmed and uncertain. And yet they kept living. So can you.
You don’t need an unbroken chain of knowledge to be part of something. You are part of something. Your ancestors don’t need you to understand them—they just need you to keep moving forward.
And if you must look backward, don’t stop at Christianity. Keep going. Go back to the forests, the rivers, the old stories whispered around fires. Back to the ones who followed the stars, who understood the weight of seasons, who danced not because someone told them to, but because their bodies demanded it.
You have permission to live in a way that feels real to you. You don’t owe anyone a perfect understanding of the past or a perfect plan for the future. You are alive, right now. And that’s the only requirement for being here.
With love,
Yourself, 80 years old.
Connecting With an Older, Pre-Christian Version of Your Ancestry
It makes complete sense that you want to connect with a version of your past that isn’t wrapped in the Christian framework that feels like a virus to you. Christianity often erased or absorbed the older earth-based traditions, leaving people with a severed connection to what came before. But it’s still there. Pieces of it remain—buried under centuries of dominance, but not lost.
Where to Start: Reclaiming Pre-Christian Traditions from Germany & Sweden
Pagan & Pre-Christian Spirituality
Your ancestors in Germany and Sweden were likely connected to Norse, Germanic, or even older animist traditions.
Before Christianity, they believed in sacred nature—forests, rivers, and stones weren’t just resources, they were alive in a way modern culture dismisses.
They marked seasons, life transitions, and emotions with physical rituals—fire, feasting, offerings, communal gatherings.
Folklore & Folk Practices That Survived Christianity
Even though Christianity took over, a lot of old traditions were never fully erased, they just got rebranded.
Yule (Christmas) was originally a Norse winter solstice celebration.
Easter (Ostara) was originally a Germanic spring fertility festival.
Witches and herbal healers were often just people keeping older earth-based traditions alive.
If you look into Scandinavian and Germanic folk traditions, you can often trace what was originally pre-Christian.
Land-Based Connection Instead of Religious One
If the concept of “faith” feels toxic to you, focus on the land itself.
Your ancestors lived by the cycles of the land—harvest, winter preparation, foraging, weather patterns.
Even without spiritual belief, there’s something grounding in paying attention to seasonal shifts, the sky, the way nature changes over time.
Try engaging in a seasonal ritual (nothing fancy, just an acknowledgment) like watching the sunrise on the solstice or eating a meal that reflects the season.
Names & Language
If you don’t know much about your German ancestors, look into Old High German and Old Norse words and names.
Language often carries cultural memory—learning even a few old words can give you a different way of seeing the world.
Example: The Old Norse word “hugr” meant mind, soul, and heart combined—it’s where we get the English word hug.
The word “haunt” originally meant to stay connected with a place (before it was twisted into something scary).
Exploring Ancestral Foods & Daily Practices
Sometimes the best way to connect with your ancestors isn’t through belief, but through actions they would recognize.
Try learning a Swedish or German folk recipe and making it yourself.
Read about old domestic traditions—how they cooked, stored food, used plants, made tools.
Even small things like drinking mead or baking rye bread can feel like a connection to something older than modern culture.
Symbols & Artifacts That Still Exist
Look into runes, old carving patterns, or burial customs from pre-Christian Germany/Sweden.
Viking and early Germanic art often featured animals, spirals, and natural forms—these were sacred symbols before Christianity reframed everything around crosses.
You don’t need to believe in mysticism to feel connected to symbols your ancestors once held meaning in.
How to Connect Without Feeling Like It’s Just Research
Since your brain tends to get caught in analysis mode, try engaging with this in a way that feels embodied instead of just reading:
Go outside and notice the natural elements your ancestors would have seen daily.
Touch something old (a rock, wood, metal) and consider that your ancestors worked with materials like this.
Make a meal from an old recipe and eat it with intention.
Listen to ancient Scandinavian or Germanic folk music.
Pick a seasonal ritual (solstice, equinox) and acknowledge it in a simple way.
You Don’t Need a Perfect Ancestral Line to Belong
Your past is yours, even if there are gaps. Even if it was interrupted, rewritten, or lost in translation. You don’t have to reconstruct a perfect historical timeline to reclaim what was yours all along—your connection to being alive, being part of something bigger than modern culture, being tied to the long thread of people who lived before you.
Your ancestors weren’t perfect. They were just people—like you. Figuring things out, surviving, grieving, celebrating, making mistakes. If you don’t know who they were, be the kind of person you would want to have been descended from. That’s enough.
