"We need to chase down our authentic core. Every time we unearth a clue, every time we discover a piece of the puzzle that is “us”, we must chase it. We can’t just ignore what we know to be true about ourselves."
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authenticity
I love this week between Christmas and New Year. Nobody seems to know what to do. Some shops are closed, some are open, most of the population have headed away from the city for their holidays, and those that are left wander the streets like kings of the apocalypse, owners of a ghost town. None of the usual rules apply.
It's a limbo week, as the year wraps itself up, and everything new is right there on the horizon. Fresh starts and open skies, just over that ridge. And as we walk towards the shiny lights, we discard the luggage of the year, letting go all the victories, the defeats, the joys and the hurts, so that we can start again.
This year for me was all words, and no pictures. For fifty-two weeks, I only wrote. As a photographer, who was only known for being a photographer, this was a different path, and certainly not one that any business coach would advise. "Leverage your imagery" they would say. "Don't waste that talent."
But, way back in January I wrote about "chasing ourselves" no matter the cost. That is, leaning in to who we are becoming - whenever we discover another piece of ourselves we chase it down, and we keep growing.
And that's really what I did this year. There were so many pieces of myself that resonated so strongly around meaning, relationships and storytelling that I wrote all year about it, and had the pleasant surprise of not running out of things to say.
I've loved every moment of this process. It was hard sometimes in those zero-degree mornings to get up and write, and it was hard after a 15-hour day to head out to a bar and write, but every single time I did it, I loved it.
Story theorist Robert McKee once wrote that when we experience a story, we are seeing the storyteller's own map of the hidden order of life. In all the things I've written, some of them simple stories, some of them a little more complex, what has risen to the surface are ideas around meaning, connection, conflict, relationships, identity, work, authenticity, truth, awareness, love, and whimsy. And all of it, wrapped in this frame of "storytelling," and "story-living."
If these elements were my personal map of life's hidden order, I'd be okay with that.
I'm excited about 2022. I'm excited to write more words, and perhaps also play with some pictures again. Or video. Or paint. Maybe some interpretive dance. I'm sure the medium doesn't matter as much as any of us think. But whichever form it takes, I hope I can keep accessing my map of life's hidden order, and when I share it, I hope that you will take only what is useful for your own world, at the right time.
Thank you for your encouragement over the year. Thank you for reading and commenting and sharing. I know I'm just writing for myself ultimately, but it's really fun to hear how these words resonate with others. We really are all in this together.
And Rach, thank you for giving me that soft but oh-so-powerful permission each day to spend the time.
With so much love, and giddy excitement for the new year.
After last week’s post, where I dropped in the concept of “show don’t tell,” I haven’t been able to let it go. All week, there’s been a vague shadow of an idea, like an irrepressible ghost trying to get through to me.
I’d be cleaning my teeth, and over my shoulder is this thought, just kind of staring at me, eyebrows raised.
I’m in a meeting, and across the room in an empty chair, the thought is sipping ice water and rolling its eyes at my jokes.
Even now, in this bar with the renaissance cat paintings on the wall - the thought is next to me, flicking my glass, drumming its fingers on the table, staring at me expectantly.
Fine, I say to the shadow. I’ll write you.
--
The concept of “show don’t tell” is as old as any story. It’s powerful because it’s true, but it’s not simple, and it’s not binary.
On stage or screen, yes, we craft the story so that the audience can see the character’s identity through the actions they take. But what about literature? We learn so much about a character through their own internal dialogue, about how they perceive their world, and that’s all TELL, without any SHOW.
I am more like a book than a movie. I’m ruminative. I need to talk things through before ever acting. I have to speak, rant, question, second-guess myself, to get some clarity. And it’s not just clarity on what to DO, but even what it is I BELIEVE. My friend Jason and I are both ruminators, and will spend countless hours wandering city streets, spending a whole night on a single topic, just musing and playing with ideas around it, trying to get to the core of what each of us believe.
It sounds a lot like "all talk no action." How does “show don’t tell” work for that?
Often I have behaved as if my life were literature, and others could just read my mind. I’ve assumed that they understand my intentions, my motivations, my heart. On the inside I’m feeling all these things, and believing all these things, while on the outside, I’m as dull as a brick. I remember once being accused of indifference, of not caring about someone, and I was so shocked. To me, I cared deeply about this person - they were always on my mind - but to them, I was distant and uncaring.
Nobody can read our minds. Whatever we are thinking needs to be demonstrated somehow before others can believe it.
So we speak, or we act.
But, if we ONLY speak, then we may not seem authentic. We say things that aren’t proved by actions.
And if we ONLY act, then our actions can be misinterpreted. We do things that aren’t explained clearly.
“Show don’t tell” becomes a lot less simple, and certainly not universally true. To be honest (and to borrow a phrase from a Roblox game my kids play) it’s an absolute clutter-funk.
—
I look over at the shadow-thought, reclining in the candlelight, and I scowl.
"You are not easy to write." I grumble.
“But here you are writing” it replies smugly.
"But all I’m doing is dumping words onto a page. Adding to the noise. It’s all ‘tell.’" I say.
“So it doesn’t matter?”
“If I don’t do this, nothing happens at all. The words stay locked in my head, and nothing reaches anyone.”
“So it does matter?”
“Oh shut up."
—
Show. Tell. Talk. Act. They're all important. And we’ll all do it differently. This dance between speaking our truths, and acting on them, is a fluid, ever-changing energy, and really can't be constrained to a rulebook of specifics.
It's frustrating to admit, but most of our decisions are born from intuition rather than logic. Behind all the words and all the actions is a mysterious drive, a spark, a shadow of an idea that pushes us towards speaking or acting, and I don’t really know how much control we have over that. I heard an interview with a writer this week, and she was asked about her process, the rules she followed for writing her books.
She said that no system has ever worked for her. She said that the words come, and all she can do is write, and observe what she is writing, and make sure she believes it, and then edit appropriately.
Which I thought was wonderful, because I can’t do systems either. For writing or for living. But I can try to stay open to intuition, and respond with both words and actions, and then observe it all, and make changes, and keep growing.
—
I stare over my empty glass with a sigh, and the shadow-idea stares back.
“Is it enough?” I ask, a bit hopelessly.
The shadow leans forward, places a hand on mine, and smiles. “It’s enough."
In my late teens, I discovered the wonderful world of gossip.
At the time I had no idea that that was what I was engaging in, but it absolutely was. I had friends who told me things, in private, to be kept secret, and I had other friends who asked me things about those private conversations. And when I shared these little details, my listeners became deliciously attentive. A sinister and attractive connection arose between us, where I would share information, and they would respond in wonder and delight.
“Nathan, you’re good friends with Beth, hey? Has she told you who she has a crush on? Is it Michael?”
“Uh, yeah, she’s been flirting with Michael, but he’s not the one she actually likes.”
(Gasping) “Oh reeeeally? Then, who is it? It’s so cool that you know, when none of us do!”
“Well, it’s Ben. She actually loves Ben, and is just using Mike to get closer to Ben.”
“OMG! Wow. Isn’t that so interesting? And gosh, poor Michael, because, doesn’t he like her??”
“Yeah, he does. He’s in love with Beth, but she’s in love with Ben, and.. you know what?”
“Yes? What?”
“Ben just told me he's is in love with Kate.”
“Noooooooo!!!”
“Yeah.”
And so on. I didn’t even consider the moral fallout. At 16 years old, I was still new to this world, I was still learning, I was naive. I was firmly in the present moment, and every other moment was just collateral damage.
These conversations went on for months, I’m ashamed to say. Beautiful faces with nice-smelling hair were paying me so much attention, actively seeking me out, pulling me aside, asking me what I know about others. And every time I shared something, their eyes would grow wide, their delicate hands would stroke my arm, and I felt warm feelings everywhere.
I had no idea that with each interaction, I was building an identity for myself. That I was becoming someone untrustworthy.
Anyway, with all the attention, and the warm feelings, and the pretty faces, I was never going to change. I was a wide-eyed deer enjoying all the shiny headlights. Until Maddie-day.
It was a weekend, and we had just finished our usual catchup: my friend Maddie is innocently asking me all about my friends’ secrets, and I'm spilling the beans. But then, instead of giving me the warm eyes and arm-strokes I’d become accustomed to, she goes dark. She pauses, with this smug smile on her face, and says bluntly,
“Nathan, you know that none of us girls would ever share our own secrets with you, don’t you?"
And it was my turn to go wide-eyed. I didn’t know what to say, but my foolish 16-year-old face forced a smile, and I asked “Why is that?”
“Because, dear, you are a gossip. All the girls just talk to you because you tell them your friends’ secrets. No one here actually trusts you at all.” She smiles again, gives a little “and that’s that” shrug, and trots off.
I was stunned. Every conversation from the past six months crowded back into my brain, and I started piecing together the looks, the hugs, the interest, and all the words I spoke so foolishly. She was right, of course, but in that moment all I could think was “Maddie is so mean. So rude. I hate her.”
I walked away, and stopped talking to her. But, I also stopped talking to everyone else too. The next time someone asked me to share some secrets, I would simply say “ah, that is a very good question, and one that is not mine to answer!”
For a long while, I didn’t get the excited looks from the pretty faces with nice hair. I didn’t get arm-rubs and eyelash-batting. I just wasn’t interesting anymore.
After another long while, things started to change again. New faces would lean in, and whisper their confessionals. I would nod sometimes, and cry with them sometimes. It became my hand that rubbed their shoulder, my eyes that grew wide, my head that would shake slowly. A soft trusting connection would form, and it was now me trying to make them feel warmer.
I really don’t know what made Maddie say what she did. I despised her for saying it, but in hindsight I see a deep intuition that neither of us were old enough to own. As painful as her words were to me, they were true, and they saved me.
I realise now that what I was doing was what story theorist Robert McKee would describe as “flexing emotions.” He explains that stories resonate in us because we all want to "visit another world, and be illuminated." We want to "use our minds in fresh and experimental ways, flex our emotions.” A story is a safe place for us to exercise all of the feelings, because in the end, it’s not really happening to us, but we can hold the feels for a while.
What the naive 16-year-old me was trying to do was really the same thing: I was holding other people’s relationships, feelings, lives. I was flexing my emotions vicariously through other humans' stories, like a commentator at a football game who never actually picks up a football. What Maddie did was force me into my own story. I had to experience my own emotions, with all the highs and lows that go with them. It was far more difficult than running commentary, but also, more rewarding.
Reading a great book, or watching an engaging TV series, or scrolling through everyone else's social media stories, all help us to flex our emotions. We visit another world, and try to find some illumination. Spending time listening and retelling each other's stories is exactly the same: we are in another's world, and vicariously feeling what they feel.
Our challenge, in fact one of our greatest challenges in life I believe, is to know what to do with the story once we have heard it.
A below-the-line response to a story is passive, reactive, gossip. We sit back and enjoy it all, and then we might perhaps reshare it, someone else's moment, and pretend that their feelings are ours.
But, an above-the-line response is entirely different. It's active. It seeks meaning and connection and illumination. It makes it personal. When it reshares, it doesn't need to share the story verbatim, but the insights gained from the story.
Stories are not meant to provide an ESCAPE from life. They are meant to help us FIND life. To find new perspectives and emotions and insights for our own lives and relationships. The goal of the storyteller has always been AUDIENCE TRANSFORMATION, and in our real lives, we can actively choose that path: every story we hear can transform us. From cinema hits to heart-journeys of loved ones, we can visit these other worlds, flex our emotions, and bring back some illumination.
And that illumination is ours, it is truth, and is exactly what the world does need to hear from us.
I discovered this in a notebook from a few years ago, and after all the conversations Rach and I have had this week I think it must relevant somehow… If you’re not feeling very unique this week, then read on..
--
Yesterday evening I found my ten-year-old, Jeremy, flopped on his bed, tears rolling down his face, eyebrows all furrowed and eyes kind of furious.
Two minutes before that, he was happily working through his Harry Potter Lego castle, generally joyful and chatty.
This huge crash in emotions was triggered by one little experience: Shasta, his younger brother, asked him for help with a new drawing app on his iPad. It was an app that Jeremy himself found just a few days earlier. He loves to draw, and wanted to create some new styles and comics, so researched the right tools, and eventually found this one.
Jeremy was so excited about this new tool, and had been studiously learning how to draw things. He had just started his first comic panel.
And then, disaster hit.
His brother got excited and inspired by what he was doing, and asked if he, too, could have the app. I saw no problem in it, and said yes, and all of a sudden Jeremy’s energy dropped a little.
Twenty minutes later, Shasta is asking for help, holding up a screen already filled with drawings and colour and comics that look as good, if not better, that Jeremy’s own work.
I can imagine what happened next in Jem’s mind, because we still do this as adults:
First, a sharp feeling of injustice, that someone just stole the “thing” that makes us, us. Then, jealousy - this other human is producing really good work. And they seem to be doing it with more ease than we ever did. And lastly, resignation - that compounding sense of “what’s the point, now?”
And, what is the point? Someone else can do what I’m trying to do, and it seems better, and they make it look easier. So, why bother anymore?
It’s pretty disappointing. All of a sudden, the desire to create dries up, the feeling of uniqueness and individuality crumbles to dust, and we are left with frustration, jealousy and often anger at that other “better” person.
So, I'm sitting on the edge of the bed, watching this little face leak angry tears down hot cheeks, and I ask “is this because of Shasta and that app?”
Jeremy’s gaze is locked on a spot on the wall, but fresh tears appear on his lashes. He nods, and says, “Shasta didn’t even care about drawing until I got the app. He just did it because I’m doing it!”
“Does it matter?” I reply. “That he has the same app as you? You guys produce very different work, so no one would compare and say one is better than the other?”
“But it was MY thing. And now he’s doing it too!”
And there it was: “It’s my thing.”
—
Comparison breaks us, and I hate it. I’m sure it wasn’t meant to, but over thousands of years of us humans relating to each other, we have managed to turn comparison into something dark. Now when we see a difference in another, instead of applauding the diversity, we make a judgement of better and worse.
And ownership diminishes us. It tells us that we are what we own. It makes us believe that our uniqueness comes from the tools or titles or toys we hold, instead of the vast galaxy of resource that exists in our physical, emotional and spiritual being.
Who you are is found in the totality of your being. Everywhere you’ve been, everything you love. Everything you believe. All that you allow to waterfall through your heart and onwards into others. As far as unique and beautiful humans go, you’re freaking untouchable.
And you know what the great irony is? I KNOW this about Jeremy, but he’s going to spend the next decade slowly believing it for himself. So every time he turns to me with defeat in his eyes, I’ll tell him again, “you are beautiful and unique, little one. Do your thing, stay open, relax, it’s ok. Keep the channel open."
__
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”
- Martha Graham
This week, I spent a lot of hours writing a thing. I had an idea, and was focussed on sharing it, pushing my opinion, convincing my readers that the idea is true. I was going to post it today.
But then I read it. And then I trashed it.
I realised that I was writing so that others would agree with me. Like-minded others who would rally to my side, while I shared a polaric opinion about something I honestly didn’t know enough about.
There is a great difference, it turns out, between being like-minded and being like-hearted.
Like-minded people gather together and agree, and rant against those that disagree. We form groups and sides, and double down on our beliefs and stances and our right-ness.
Like-hearted people, in contrast, gather on the plain of love, acceptance, and difference. We believe different things on the surface, we can disagree, and have totally unique life experiences. But we stay together to learn from each other: perspectives, opinions, wisdom from other angles.
I often find it difficult to engage with a single-minded writer. They either have me on their side, or they don't, and then they are just trying to convince me of something. That's fine for a science paper, but it's not STORY.
Storytelling is all about like-heartedness. All writers have deep beliefs and opinions, but the great ones never explicitly need to share them. They wrap their world views in a trojan horse of shared narrative experience, allowing their audience to walk with them and draw their own conclusions in their own time.
Storytelling invites everyone in. It may seem like the softest tool of revolution, but it honestly has the most power to actually change someone’s mind. Living like-heartedly means you don’t have to convince, win or own. You just have to invite, and listen, and share the stories.
Last week I joined a couple of friends for a drive up the coast to Gnaraloo Station. From Perth, Gnaraloo is a thousand kilometres away.
I had a seat in the back, pressed up against sleeping bags, wetsuits, and something that smelled like banana bread. For the two hours before the sun rose, I watched suburban porchlights streak past, all tungsten yellow, then the city lights, giant bug-zappers of brilliant white, then the northern fringe cities with their pale blues and intermittent fuel-station-golds. And then, nothing. Just a comfortable darkness, visited occasionally by a passing car or a stray streetlight.
Nick drove the entire way. For twelve hours he chatted and laughed and shared his stories and listened to ours. Ian is almost twenty years older than me, and engages with others as if we know the secrets of the ages, and just need the time to get it out in words.
My focus drifted from conversations within the car to conversations with the horizon. For hours it was dirt-red, then a splash of canola yellow, forest green, granite and limestone, then back to dirt. It was quite beautiful, an entire palette comfortable with her loneliness.
Gnaraloo is in the middle of nothing. It really is. It's a sheep station, but I barely saw any sheep. Wild goats, though, they were everywhere. They looked down on us with their proud beards and funny tails, like they owned the place, like they were running the show. A people-farm, run by the goats. The locals of Gnaraloo don't dissuade this idea at all: they are wild and earthy and distant, their language is the land and the ocean. People come here for only three things: to surf, to fish and to feel free.
A few mornings in, I asked Ian why he's here. Why it matters to drive all this way, peel yourself into a wetsuit, and take your board out into the hyperthermic waters to ride a few waves. He had just returned from the ocean, and was crunching through an apple, watching Nick finish up his last wave. I got out and leaned on the car with him, and squinted into the glare. Me with my notebook, Ian with his apple.
"Why do you do this?" I asked him.
"Because it's who I am," he replied, then paused, "but only as long as I'm actually doing it."
He talks like this a lot.
"You don't feel like a surfer unless you're surfing?" I ventured.
"No, I still feel like a surfer, for sure. But that identity requires some action, you know? The longer I don't surf, the more I become a person who used to surf, not a person who actually surfs."
I looked at him and blinked twice, and he took another bite of apple.
"It's about identity," he continued, "by doing this stuff, I'm revisiting my identity, empowering it somehow."
"Empowering it?
"Yeah, I'm empowering myself, my belief in myself. It's one thing to become who you want to be in life, but a whole other challenge to stay there. Over time we can start to question ourselves and our abilities, and we can start to doubt ourselves."
"And our identities can lose their way."
"Exactly. Our identities get blurry. And the only way I know to return to clarity is to act. To do something today that reminds me of who I am."
"And who are you today?"
He laughed. "I am a person who surfs!"
Nick appeared on the path just then, and we headed back to the homestead for breakfast.
-
In storytelling, there is always a tension between a character's aspiration and their reality. There is a version of themselves they WANT to be, or that they THINK they are, and then, there is who they REALLY are. It's a gold mine for writers, exploring those gaps, revealing to the protagonist their reality and pushing them off the cliffs that will grow and transform them.
A character can be amazing, but think they are nothing special. Or they can have some serious flaws, but think they are just perfect. In the end, what they, or others, say about themselves doesn't matter half as much as what they do. Like Ian observed: identity needs action.
After that conversation with Ian, I had to ask myself the same question: "Why am I here? Why did I travel a thousand kilometres to a surfing station when I don't surf or fish?" It was an identity question.
While Ian and Nick were revisiting and strengthening their identities as "people who surf", I found myself revisiting childhood memories. Hours of wandering in white-bright sand dunes, playing with shells, drawing in red dirt, watching the shadows from stones stretch out across my bare toes. Being at peace with the nothingness of those places.
By joining Nick and Ian for the trip, I became what I always thought I was, but perhaps hadn't acted on for a while:
A person who seeks wonder and beauty over comfort or progress.
It just took a few thousands kilometres to remind me it was true.
Earlier this year, Rach and I attended a dinner event. We barely knew anybody there, but they were the kinds of people that were important to our work, so we decided to pay the $150 per ticket and just see what happens. This is often how our business life goes - We step into a space with open hearts, and see if there are connections with others. We each share stories, perspectives, ideas, and look for a fit.
It was dusk, and the restaurant overlooked the river, whose surface danced with oranges and purples, and the city lights from the far shore. We sat at a table of six, everyone looked dashing and beautiful, and the wine was paired perfectly with the seven courses. It had all the makings of a truly enjoyable and meaningful evening.
I think the way a culture evolves is very similar to the way a conversation evolves. We all start off separate, nothing to relate to, outside of our geographical setting, and then we start to talk. And the more we spend time together, the more we learn about each other, the more we discover we have in common, the more interesting the other party becomes. We start to assign value to differences, considering where in our lives their pieces can fit.
Like a jigsaw puzzle, where we each have a pocketful of pieces, we’re all slowly revealing what we have, and together finding the right fit for each piece, slowly building the masterpiece.
The first course arrives, and the conversations begin. This magical potential to add some more pieces to the great jigsaw puzzle. Rach compliments someone’s choice of earrings, asks about the story behind them. I share about my day, some of the challenges I got through to get to this moment. Across from us, a doctor shares a dramatic story of life-and-death pressures at work, while juggling a young family at home. The earrings, it turns out, were chosen because the owner loves to paint. But she can’t find the time for arting, because of her myriad other commitments of life. The doctor, it turns out, struggles with expectations, and a feeling of never being good enough.
This is the evolution. We start at the surface, we find similar experiences or feelings, we build some trust, and then we dive deeper. And as the conversations become more vulnerable, the level of connection between us grows stronger, the potential for deep insight increases, and we start to attribute this conversation to be “meaningful”, or “worthwhile”.
Absolutely worth the $300 we paid for the tickets.
The trajectory of the evening was looking great. The way things were going, we might not only find ourselves in some really deep and meaningful conversations, but we also may end up with some work collaborations in the future. It seems simple: We share our stories, we increase the vulnerability and the connection, and we land on a meaningful experience.
But, what happens if some of us as the table choose NOT to share their stories honestly? What happens if, instead of vulnerability, they share dramatic self-aggrandising stories? Or melodramatic soap operas? Or judgemental black-and-white opinions?
..
By the second course, the conversation has already commenced its downhill run on the dark path of melodrama. Two of our party, long-time friends of each other, began to share their stories. Long, detailed accounts of their own lives, monologued at a “here’s what happened” level without ever allowing insight as to what they made it mean for themselves. They were so proud of their lives, that they lost sight of anyone else’s. And, by generating such a dramatic, surface-style story energy, they were essentially demanding that we all respond with this same style of story: If anyone is to join this conversation, they must bring an equally sensational story to the table. And then we’ll all decide who’s story is better.
Rach and I went quiet. The plates came out, one after the other, and the monologues ran longer and became more sensational. We couldn’t find the space to speak, nor the energy to turn the conversation. Our pockets were still filled with our jigsaw pieces. The others in our circle had pockets filled with jigsaw pieces. And on the table was the jigsaw, with just a handful of pieces from these two conversation vampires, being swished about as if they can fill all the gaps on their own.
We left at midnight completely exhausted. The food was delicious, the guests all looked beautiful, but the conversations shattered us. Like a facebook feed, we were just bombarded with drama and self-promotion. We did not evolve that night, and it took us a week to recover.
Aristotle writes that when storytelling goes bad, the result is decadence. I think he may have been referring to a decadence of ego. A story requires more than surface action: it requires vulnerability, emotion, a heart-response. Sharing our successes alone, without admitting the terrors and self-doubts and weaknesses that preceded the success, does our audience, and our culture, a great disservice.
Revealing our jigsaw pieces to the world takes courage. Sharing any part of ourselves with another is hard. But this is how we are built: The evolution of our culture, just like a meaningful story, just like my next conversation with you, requires more than the story of your success.
I need your honesty.
“Rachel Callander, award-winning photographer, gives up wedding photography to evangelise the Health System.”
“Nathan Maddigan, award-winning photographer, gives up wedding photography to persue authentic story craft.”
It doesn’t matter, really. What the papers say. What the fans say. What the critics say.
What matters, is that we chase ourselves.
What I mean is, every day of our lives, we are learning more about ourselves, what we love, what we believe in, what we despise. And the more we learn, the greater the responsibility to act.
We need to chase down our authentic core. Every time we unearth a clue, every time we discover a piece of the puzzle that is “us”, we must chase it. We can’t just ignore what we know to be true about ourselves.
I’ve done it, the ignoring-my-true-self thing. I experience a moment of revelation, of what I truly love in life, where I actually want to put effort in to achieve. And then I shut it down. I’m afraid of the work, or of failure, or of success. So I push it down, and ignore it.
And when I do that, I shrink a bit. I become smaller, weaker. And I’m reminded of Viktor Frankl’s words,
“When a man cannot find meaning, he numbs himself with pleasure.”
And I’m reminded to return to the chase, keep learning, trying, changing. To not give in to the fear or give up for the comfort. To honour everything that is weird/unique/different in me, honour the calling, and to keep chasing.