Tvl.

The question is then, are we giving ourselves enough space to grow? When you sit back, and the entire view framed by the cockpit is the sum total of your territory, your environment, with the city to the south, and your suburb to the north, you start to question where your roots have left to grow. When you’re confronted with this the answer always seems to be a trade off between recycling the space you’ve already conquered and challenging yourself to exceed levels of previous experience or to uproot entirely and move on. However appealing and spontaneous the latter, there is always the option of the third. When you feel you have reached the boarders of your potential growth the way to keep moving forward is to move inward. Where territory is infinite and growth imminent. That being said though, to uproot, to ‘move’ should always be with the intention to be moved, and not to simply move around.

Mirror mirror.

All it takes is knowing yourself to find yourself knowing others. And to know them well enough to create discomfort and unease as to how that knowledge came to be. A gradient that will see them leaning forward with intrigue and curiosity as they attempt to restore the balance in this acquaintance.

They desire to leave you equally exposed, equally vulnerable, yet the more they seek in you, the more they find themselves. They find themselves as a result of your ability to relate, to seek and solve similarities as a reference point from which to thread your understanding and base relation.

The effortlessness of your ability to relate can only come from knowing yourself intricately, and that intricate knowing from putting yourself in situations that you have never known yourself to be in, testing yourself against your differences, your odds thereby training yourself to find yourself everywhere, and in everything even where you are not.

The art herein lies in not being so obviously defined and rigid in self but instead in being defining, to be as much as you are as what you are not and to be as comfortable in similarity as you are in difference. To be entirely analogue. Entirely relatable. And from this state; the thread of understanding and the depth of knowing another no longer provokes vulnerability but instead gratification and addiction to the expression and freedom it is to be around you without the expectation of having to fit into what they have been before, and to whom. The cessation of role and title and the birth of something new. Something of vigour and valiance.

So then, the question you ask yourself is. When you walk away from a conversation, an introduction or perhaps a relationship of kind. If “they” followed the footprints you left behind, would they lead them back to you, or would they lead them back to themselves? Did they learn to love who you are as your egos self perception, or did they learn to love who you showed them they could be?

Run.

Its only when you stop running do you realise that you’re tired. Stop running that you realise the first direction your mind turns as the direction you’ve been running from. Stop running that you realise you need to keep moving in order to feel alive.

Its only when you start running again that you realise that you’d rather be tired than left behind. Start running again that you realise you need to run ‘to’ and not ‘from’ the direction your mind applies. start running again do you realise the clarity brought about by the motion blur. Start running again that you realise that life and living lies in mobility, and in mobility, mortality. In mortality, adaptability and in adaptability, evolution. And in evolution and the embrace of change, so you’ll realise the elixir of life…

Pick yourself up and keep moving.

 

Where there is smoke

They see the extravagance and grandeur of the RISING smoke but what they don’t see is how that fire has fought to stay alive…
What they don’t see is the emotion that’s gone into the motion and path of the flame. What they don’t see is the courage, fearlessness and sacrifice made when having to find fuel at a pace synchronous to the rapidity of a howling wind. They don’t see the ability to sustain momentum and to find new places to “put yourself in” when everything is striving to “put you out” as passion, power or intelligence. Instead they find comfort in seeing it as an unfair advantage, an elemental privilege. A Privilege that you’ll forever be held against. (Ironically though; the heat and light of which they love to share but the energy required to sustain they’re reluctant to contribute)
They choose to see the zealous consumption of opportunity as greed and so they pray for the rain to end the fires reign. But what they don’t realize is that the fire burns for the rain. Because it’s only after it rains that you see what the fire has been working for all this time. It’s only after it rains that you get to see the beauty in the sacrifice and the ascension of purpose, and how that purpose has created more than what it could ever have destroyed….

Game time

It’s a game of time this life and we’re all forced to play by its rule. The question is, with whom do you decide to play?

You play with the person, the people, who have the power and the ability to bend the rules of time and add a pulse and a heart beat to its rhythm. They’ll make your time stand still, they’ll make your mind see time years forward and sometimes they’ll even make you wish you could turn it back. They’ll be the ones that you’ll forever measure and gauge time against, the quality of which cannot be counted by hands rotated, but by lifetimes that must have been lived before now, and the certainty that your connection will carry you through to lifetimes hereafter…..

 

The freedom to the fall, the authenticity in imperfection and the confidence in recovery.

There is a marked difference between those who have designed their own path and those who’ve chosen to rely on the path walked by many before them. The path pioneers, and those willing to impress bare footprint to wade through the unknown understand how to create space and opportunity for themselves to grow and prosper, as do they know the blood, sweat and tears that go into its creation.
They understand what it is to work for something and not be worked by someone in order to get what they want. They’re truly free, free to express and free from having to suppress themselves in order to appease. Free to roam and create a new legacy without having to ask for permission or wait for the hand of someone else’s clock to stop moving before theirs is allowed to start ticking. Importantly (and most importantly at that…) they have the freedom and privilege to make mistakes before they’re bailed out and redirected by their conscience. Yes, failure and space in which to make mistakes is a privilege as it can only be earned through pushing the boundaries of comfort and safe play. I’m not talking about the kind of failure that’s derived from recklessness, but the kind that’s a result of courage and curiosity to persist beyond the stack of odds. The noble quest to be more, ask more, discover more, evolve more, share more, love more, learn more and rely more on your own capabilities is tireless and can’t be overcome if you’re not willing to get a couple things wrong before you know what right feels like. A couple bumps, bruises and scars along the way. It’s the artistry involved in creating your character, and an authentic character lies in imperfections, but when presented as perfection it’s all a lie. All. A. Lie. So Disregard the seemingly perfect person and those living a life of make believe, their characters are brittle and untested. They’re merely disguising their fear by decorating it with fantasy. Instead, regard those who wear their imperfections with pride, for their characters are rich, and their stories need to be told.
Authentic living requires a couple practice Autorotations, simulated emergencies and failures. The training of which is not there to tempt fate, boast skill or award mavericks. It’s there to teach you how to recover. To know when to execute the flare and cushion the landing. You see; you can’t fly with true freedom if you don’t have peace of mind, and peace of mind is confidence. Confidence that you’ve seen yourself manage the seemingly unmanageable.
So fuck it. We all need to stop holding ourselves back because we’re too scared to deal with the consequence of imperfection. We need to stop ourselves from riding the wave of others success through their failure. Instead; we need to be the moon to our own tide and go through all required phases in order to ride a wave generated by the push and pull of our own energy.
We need to embrace the struggles, see the privilege in adversary, the poetry in pain and the art in imperfection. We need to expose our authentic selves entirely, see the virtue in vulnerability and victory as the person we pick ourselves up as after a fall. And a fall, not as societal perception of a failure, but rather an opportunity to practice recovery, and as affirmation that we’re pioneering a path of progress, purpose and power.

Compassion

The co-existance or the togetherness of passion, and passion the impetuous flow of feeling. To feel for, as you yourself have felt. To express compassion for another, we first need to express passion for the self. The origin of compassion therefore lies in the love, kindness and understanding you had to blend in order to heal your wounded mind, body and soul before offering that remedy for another. Compassion is not weakness, nor is it a passive approach to the unconscious and needy that deplete your energy as they demand to be served by someone before they learn to self serve.

Compassion arises when the self is no longer concerned with how it appears to be. Acts of compassion are therefore not done to save, to please, or to demand glory, they’re merely done either to alleviate the suffering of ourselves or others through our ability to relate to experience.

Compassion therefore is an exhibition of strength, and a passport stamped with the ink of hurt and in the colour of the courage you had to conjure to travel to the high and low places before finding the peace and freedom in the now. Compassion is strength. Strength defined by the person you became when you were at your most vulnerable, your most exposed, your most weak.

Compassion is not boasting of perfection, and does not look down upon those who are suffering, compassion therefore is the scar tissue we wear as proof of our ability to heal, and not our inability to be broken.

 

 

The outcast. The independant.

Isn’t it funny how we’re groomed to believe that being understood is advantageous and essential to societal integration & progression? I see an awful lot of people walking around in desperation and agony pining for the “world” to understand their being. I see minds being mislead by the promise of “safety” in being understood and the false premise that being understood translates to being trustworthy and when the world trusts your intentions they’ll assist you to get where you’re ultimately striving to be. Its all a lie.

Trust and understanding are entirely different moral entities. You’re not being forced to explain yourself for your benefit, but rather for the benefit of those who are making you feel sinfully misunderstood. Truth is, there is freedom, safety, infinite space for creativity and endless power in the mystery of being misunderstood.

Being understood, however, enslaves you to those who are offering their understanding as if it’s some sort of generous gift. They fool you to seek comfort in being “seen” and noticed, however their intention is not to appreciate what you’ve exposed but to hold you captive by it. To encourage you to habitually reveal your cards so they can work around shuffling their decks until they can adequately play against your hand.

Life is not about explaining yourself to make others feel comfortable in your presence. Their discomfort is indicative of their insecurity and their insecurity is not to be solved by a downplay of yourself in response.

You’ll always notice the weak “authorities” offering the shade of their shadow under the guise that its to protect you from the light, but instead they’re trying to keep you from it. They want to control your growth and progression and make sure you’ll never advance beyond their level and propose threat, for you to forever remain their appeasing apprentice.

I say, be the outcast and the independent who does not seek to be understood or wait for permission to be something or someone. Be the bird that’s feather differs from the flock and who’s wing span is unashamedly wider. Be the bird that fights for their freedom and honours the instinct to soar.