I need to be at the gym for 0925 so I can not get told off by the instructor for being late to some class called Strength. I don’t know what kind of Strength this will be — I’ve been to this class many times before, but all I feel afterwards is Exhausted.
So as I brace myself for another 45-minute misadventure, I thought I’d swing by and say hi to my favourite people.
Hey.
I just returned from two months in Berlin with my crazy-great girlfriend. We met in Tenerife, last year. And I’ve been inseparable ever since.
We have deep chats. We’re building something. It’s all good. Unexpected. New.
One of the things I’ve been dwelling on lately is purpose. “Oh, Jesus.” That’s your mind whirring. You’re thinking I’m gonna go all Simon Sinek. You’re dead wrong.
Until this year I had in my mind some hazy goal that would motivate me to stay some indescribable course and achieve something tangible. At which point, trophy held aloft, I would be joyful and that would be that. I’d be home.
But that never happened. And I always wondered why.
I felt hollow because unlike others around me, I didn’t have something on which to hang my hat. I could have bought a shelf, or even a hat stand, but that didn’t seem like the right outcome.
Then I read some books, had some of those deep conversations.
Lost a lot of the fear that I wasn’t enough. Which is very much connected to connectedness — the idea that we need to be connected to ourselves, fully, before we can start connecting meaningfully with others.
I’ve never considered myself an artist, even though I’ve been writing professionally for nearly 30 years.
But my girlfriend is. She’s, among a painfully large number of talents, an incredible dancer. She dances from the heart, with soul. She’s remarkable. And she paints. And she lives.
And living is art. Everything we do, is art.
And sometimes we lose that essential connection to ourselves because we strive for something hidden and invisible and we keep excusing ourselves from achieving it by busying our minds.
But the connection and the art is in the being. Just doing what’s right for us. Because what’s right for us, is what makes right our relationships with others.
I had a thought today and I’m going to see if AI will understand and make a pictorial version of the thought. You’ll know before I do, because that picture will be right at the top of this article.
My thought was that life is a procession of locked doors. They are locked with a code. And only by walking our life’s path, and being our purest selves — with integrity, authenticity, and humility — will we discover the numbers.
You can’t barge these doors. You can’t rush their opening. All you can do is be yourself. To the very best of your abilities. To not be impeded by frustration. Just to recognise that life is a meandering journey from A to Z. And those riches and rewards behind those doors — those unknown artistic adventures — are waiting for us and our unique journeys to unlock them.
