What BTS has been teaching me about unexpected events
The last time I confessed myself to my pencil, I talked about transitions and transformations that we go through throughout our life. However, it’s interesting to observe how these processes are usually triggered by an unexpected event that comes to shake up all the structures of what we believe we are, know or do.
Listening to one of the episodes of the podcast “Speaking of Jung” (https://open.spotify.com/show/7ndyZNV5xYZxSYXhLzVpBl), I was able to go along with Dr. Murray Stein bringing another perspective of meanings about the song “Black Swan”. As I said in the previous publication, this track captivated me very quickly because it had the same name as one of my favorite movies. But it was only after hearing this new explanation that I went deeper in search of the origin behind this widespread term.
The term “Black Swan” had its origin in a very specific event. Until the middle of the 17th century, there was still a belief — usually Western — that all existing swans were white, since only these had been counted until then. However, in 1697, the Dutch explorer, Willem de Vlamingh, ended up discovering the existence of black swans in Australia. Thus, this was a completely unexpected event in history that changed profoundly, for example, zoology. The funny thing is that, after the discovery of the black swan, it seemed obvious that they should exist just as other animals of different colors also existed.
More recently, Nassim Nicholas Taleb — Lebanese-American author, mathematician and statistician — has taken up the event described above and postulated a fascinating theory. With his book published in 2007, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable”, Taleb proposed a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise and that has important effects. Thereby, his theory seeks to explain the role of rare and unexpected events, which are characterized as difficult or impossible to predict and which are beyond the scope of normal expectations in history, science, finance and technology.
That said, Taleb’s “Black Swan Theory” mostly refers to unexpected events of great magnitude and consequence under a more collective dimension. However, it’s clear that unexpected events also emerge individual effects and consequences, as well as they can happen in our personal dimension.
Returning to the podcast, it was pointed out by Dr. Stein that the song, “Black Swan”, was released by BTS on January 17 of this year, just before we collapsed with COVID-19. He brought this up because Carl Jung, the great theorist and founder of Analytical Psychology, developed a concept called “synchronicity”, which seeks to understand events that are related not by a causal relation, but by a meaning relation. In other words, what we often call “coincidences” are, in fact, synchronistic events not related to the principle of causality, but because they have the same or similar meaning. For this reason, Jung has also referred to synchronicity as “significant coincidence”. And what a “coincidence” it was that BTS released a song about an unexpected but inevitable encounter with the shadow just before we had an unexpected encounter with a “black swan” event, huh?
Beyond that, it is a fact that the rise of the coronavirus is a “black swan” event over the history of mankind and over our personal histories. All of us — whether you, me, BTS members or anyone else — had plans and, perhaps, goals designed for this year. Unexpectedly and inevitably, we find ourselves locked up inside our homes or exposed to absolutely different ways of living together.
However, in moments of external limitation, infinite possibilities open up in our internal journeys. We are facing, as I said in a previous publication, a moment of collective shadow — “umbra mundi” — and it’s possible that you, perhaps like me, are also facing an encounter with your shadow. We didn’t expect this moment, but it came to us and we can, however difficult and challenging it may be, grow through it.
Returning our attention to BTS, its members and what we have seen of them in recent months, it’s pretty obvious how this sudden “change of plans” has been hard and painful for them, as well as for all of us. Nonetheless, leaning on each other and on the love and care of ARMYs, they have provided us a year full of songs, albums, videos and an immense diversity of content that, honestly, are what make me get out of bed in many days.
“Map of the Soul: 7”, “Map of the Soul: 7 ~ The Journey”, “D-2”, “Dynamite” and, very soon, a new album. BTS has, once again, reinvented itself. Faced with this “black swan”, they have found ways to grow, develop and rediscover themselves in new stages of their careers and, certainly, also of their personal lives — which do not concern us, by the way.
The days have flown by us and, in them, we cannot find certainty in almost anything. So, as Jungkook said in an interview, we need to find something — big or small — that we hold on to and that gives us reasons and strength to still have hope and joy to continue.
I’m finishing writing these words in front of my bedroom window and I took a few minutes to look at the landscape. The mountains, the houses, the fields… Looking superficially, things don’t seem to have changed. While everything outside seems to move so slowly, here, within us, the metamorphosis seems constant before this “black swan” and this will definitely transform what we know as the world.
However, I looked out of the window one last time and I realized that, after the heavy rain we had today, the sun was rising behind the clouds, bright and inspiring, as on any beautiful spring day. The scene brought to my mind what has given me hope: the tomorrow, however uncertain it still is.
Therefore, I would like to share my unconditional gratitude to BTS for being like a sun over us, just as I hope we are being over them. In this hand in hand encounter in the face of the unexpected event, you have been my greatest example of personal reinvention and I really hope that we find comfort and strength in each other’s love as we wait for the next spring of life to come — yes, it will come.
“If you wait a little bit
If you spend just a few more sleepless nights
I’ll come to meet you
I’ll come to pick you up
Past the edge of cold winter
Until the spring day comes again
Until the flowers bloom
Please, stay there a little longer
Please, stay” (Spring Day — BTS)
So, please, stay there a little longer, okay? I believe in you, I believe in us.
