Purpose Pending
We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.
So says the quotation which greets visitors to my somewhat dormant website, attributed to Anaïs Nin, and oft repeated by would-be philosophers from all walks of life. And that’s really ‘it,’ isn’t it? The main theme that nearly everything in life comes back to. Perception. Reality. And the chasm between them.
Once upon a time, I wrote a weekly column which often mused on these sorts of abstract topics, drawing from goings-on in my own life, but also putting it out to the masses . . . the quarter million or so readers I theoretically reached with my random ramblings. Because, that’s the thing. Much as we can all get lost in our own heads and forge superficial connections in virtual worlds, it’s that personal feedback which is so often missing. And in that void, is where the spiral into self doubt begins.
Fast forward half a dozen years since I held a regular byline, and I’ve tried to tap into that so-called skill from time to time, penning the occasional essay for my website — or, more recently, the ‘socials.’ There have been a couple of prized freelance features which reignited a certain passion for writing. But only a very specific type, pertaining to topics I was deeply invested in. So it’s the subject, and not the craft necessarily, that’s the draw.
The same goes for photography. My computer and phone storage is nearly filled to capacity, due in large part to the tens of thousands of photos and videos captured over the course of a lifetime. Well, really the last decade in digital format, if we’re being honest. And yet, 2024 came and went without a proper photo recap, and marked the first year I decided to forgo creating a calendar. True, there were other factors that came into play; but ultimately it was that same lack of spark, of inspiration, of a true feeling of fulfillment from doing it.
They say you should ‘work to live’ and not ‘live to work.’ Perhaps it’s being out of ‘work’ in any traditional sense for the last year that has brought all these questions and contemplations to the surface. Perhaps it’s the realization that I’ve never truly loved any job I’ve held over the course of the last two decades. Or maybe, in discovering that your passion isn’t necessarily designed to pay off — neither in monetary nor spiritually soul affirming ways.
Which brings us back to the start. Which I always attempted to do in my weekly vignettes. That perception vs. reality conundrum. We perceive ourselves through a narrow lens of what we want and who we want to be surrounded by, the things we think will make us happy and the methods we feel best place us in a position to achieve them . . . and then we look around at the people — both in real life and on those scrolling feeds we ingest daily — and alternately feel inadequate or superior, but still empty inside, where it counts.
And that, at the end of the day, is as real as it gets.
{published: January 7, 2025}