I’ve been thinking a lot lately. I don’t think it’s an inherently bad thing. People like to say “I think too much” but I just think our brains are all running at different processing speeds. Some connect more than others. I’ve been thinking a lot lately. About how to write this. About the past. About what I think is next. But as William James says it better than I do, “If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.”
I went to Japan in March to peep the fashion and validate two ideas I have been toying with for a while. It was on this trip I started thinking more about what “self” means. What it means to be who you really are. Japanese fashion is an expression of the self or at least that’s how I interpreted it. The outfits people put together are about expressing who they are. That made me start to think about what it means to express oneself. What it means to be “yourself” or “myself.”
During my gap year, I wrote that I didn’t understand what purpose really meant but I knew that you have to enjoy the journey to find it because that might be ultimately what you end up with. We go through a lot of find our purpose or what we think our purpose is. Some of us travel to the other sides of the world to meet with some who they hope will give them some guidance. Some try to do what other people did only to find out that the same processes don’t really work for them. This is why I believe that Socrates was right when he said that the unexamined life is not worth living. If we don’t know who we are, how do we know WHO we want to be. Our purpose ends up defining who we are and some of us don’t know who we want to be because we don’t know how to go about becoming who we want to be. What I’ve learned is that everything we do is us trying to get closer to who we want to be. Sometimes we resist certain things we feel like doing because of external factors when in reality, we should chase after those things like a hungry dog who has picked up on the scent of food somewhere and all it has to do is follow the scent.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately. Thinking that perhaps purpose isn’t what one should long for. Perhaps fulfillment is what we should long for. With fulfillment comes purpose, it’s a symbiotic relationship. We never really talk about living a fulfilling life. We talk about what we want to be, but not who we want to be. We are sort of expected to find fulfillment along the way but we humans are fickle creatures. We move the goal posts on fulfillment in life because fulfillment tends to be more materialistic. We constantly change our definition of fulfillment because we always want the next thing. There always has to be something after. But what if there wasn’t.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately. I’ve been thinking about whether instant gratification has somewhat ruined us. Society seems to expect things to work right away but small progress built over time is what matters more. Maybe that’s why a lot of us consume more than create. The effort that we must put into creating something has to be done over time with repeated effort but a lot of us want results right away so we would rather consume than create. We would rather be fed than cook. Slow motion is still motion. That goes for purpose and finding who we want to be. We must choose to cook rather than be fed. If we choose to be fed, every time the cook changes the menu, we have to eat what is presented to us. It’s much akin to something that Reinhold Niebhur once wrote: “Every time I find the meaning of life, they change it.”
I’m one of those pretentious people who think we give life meaning but Niebuhr is completely and utterly right. If we choose to be fed than to cook, our meaning of life is entirely dependent on someone else’s meaning and every time they change that meaning, it will change for us. We slowly become copies of another entity rather than be our own entity. Ourselves.
I believe when we move from the mindset of what we want to be to who we want to be, fulfillment and purpose easily show themselves. The struggle between what and who go back to the idea of examining ones life. I believe that fulfillment in life should be to understand ourselves. To understand what makes us comfortable. To understand the ways we need to take care of ourselves. To understand how we react to things. To understand how we view the things in front of us. To understand the foods we like to eat. To understand the colors we like to wear. To understand the core philosophy within us. To understand how all the things we are interested in intertwine into one central vision and understand that the vision may change from time to time but the core idea will stay (hopefully) the same. To understand that being broke is different from being poor. If you have family that support and love you, you are not poor. To understand, as Bertand Russell puts it, that the goods of the mind are at least as important as the goods of the body.
We should really enjoy the journey to find purpose and fulfillment in life because that is the journey to find ourselves. To find what makes us tick. To understand that what we wanted to do for so long isn’t actually what we really want to do. To understand that it is okay to feel afraid about doing something else because you know in the long run, it will be what is best for you. To understand what “good” means to you in terms of people, food, life, etc. To understand that it is good to run into problem with your approach rather than not. They force you to deal with things and really ask yourself if what you’re doing is the right thing. I’ve learned this over the past couple months and it’s been difficult to put into words so I did it over time.
Because heartbreak and travel are the mother of all inspiration and inspiration isn’t something you really ever need to seek out. It’s always there ready to be used when it needs to be. So what I guess I’m trying to saying, when I say so far so good, is that the journey to find who I am has been going pretty well. I cried into the chest of my best friend while seated cross legged on a balcony on a warm night in September as a gentle breeze made itself known by caressing my bald scalp. I cried because I was afraid. Afraid of who I wanted to be because it was so far from who I thought I was supposed to be. But nothing is promised in life. Slow motion is still motion.
Taking a long worthy break to ask myself more questions. To see new things and seek new experience that may lead me to answers for these questions. To make more art and build some new things. To feel comfortable. To be on my own path. To define who I want to be rather than what I want to be.
“Heard about the guy who fell off a skyscraper?
On his way down past each floor,
he kept saying to himself:
‘so far so good… so far so good… so far…so good.’
How you fall doesn’t matter,
it’s how you land!”
So far so good… so far… so good.
