I had an “A-ha!” yesterday as a result of a fascinating conversation I’ve been having with my client (which I won’t get into here): I’m getting this sense that I’m rightly a lens, a mirror, a painter, a wind turbine — a conduit. I’m not the guy to nail down the theory or state the message. The universe is “out there” and kind of none of my business. I don’t understand how the world works; I don’t have huge, all-encompassing insights. But I do seem to get life at the personal, individual level. I do have personal convictions, but I don’t need to change the world and don’t feel equipped to anyway. I have peace down here. When I look at government or society or the economy, I get frustrated because of the opinions I hold, yet I know deep down that even those opinions are borrowed; I’d throw them out in the face of better information, because I’m not my ideas. I’m something else.
In short, I’m not a fixed point in the universe. That’s not going to sit nicely with someone who’d want me to sum myself up or to permanently join a cause. But it does free me up to let everything flow through me, and know that something of me — my wit, sense of wonder, compassion, *something* — will show up in the product.
I seem to be able to help people think through things, or to better experience what they’re experiencing, and while that’s not as flashy or marketable as being the guy with the tablets on the mountain, I can see the value of it now.
This makes a lot of sense when I look at my work (which sucks when I try to do it without a good creative brief, or when I neglect to ask for real-world input). It also explains why I enjoy drawing and writing so much — yet what the problem with authoring novels was (since a novel is a position, a fixed argument, a thesis rather than an observation — at least as I was writing them).
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Here’s another insight from this week (sorry, I feel I should draw something to go with this, to make it more palatable, but it’s conceptual, and I just want to get it down):
I’ve been wishing for twelve years that I could lose my accent, and this strikes me now as a big metaphor. This is my voice. I’ve been trying to tone it down out of embarrassment about its force and energy. I don’t blame Scotland for that — nobody’s ever suggested I should change — but it has been what I’ve felt I should do to fit in, to better understand this culture, which is very highly critical of anyone who “gets above” themselves.
When I was in Canada, specifically in the Strategic Coach environment, I had people around me cheering me on. They wanted more, more, more of me. It’s been great having the peace and quiet of Wick, and I don’t want to knock this place that’s has been so welcoming, but I feel a new wind in my sails after this visit to Toronto and I love it. Usually it diminishes back to “normal”, but this time I don’t want that. It’s not just about being celebrated (though why shouldn’t we all be?); it’s about having a purpose. I need that purpose. I’m not finished, and I don’t want to be becalmed, lost in a grey fog halfway between here and Stroma (the abandoned island that’s held my imagination since we moved to the north).
I guess I aspire to having enough self-sufficiency to exist in a void, yet the dawning awareness I spoke of above, that I work best as a medium — well, you can see how that suffocates in this environment.
I also believe that there are lines, patterns, that run through our lives, and when we follow those everything just works. I also believe, though, that we have total free will to deviate from those or ignore them altogether. The only problem is that life off the line will always be a struggle.
I’ve found love in Scotland, and I’ve found the peace to not need to get anywhere or do anything. I’m whole and complete right here, right now. But I’m also still alive, and it seems like it’d be a shame not to see how far I can go with the gifts I’ve been given while I’m here.