Good morning ladies and gentleman

I’ve always had a strangely obsessive way of looking at things. Its this idea that everything we do is born of some form of emotional reaction. Every story ever told is primarily designed to illicit some form of emotion from you, as has every moment and every action in your life, every act in every scene, from the first exclamation to the curtain fall.

The first time you kissed them, the day you passed your driving test, the day you got into university, the day you got arrested and the day the relationship was over. It created something in you, something to this day you don’t really understand because understanding isn’t feeling.

It is, when all is said and done, the fundamental building blocks of you. Whether the person looking back at you in the reflection is someone you like or not, it is the creation of you. Without the success, the failure, the pain, the pleasure, the loss life love envy lust and everything in between, you would’t be you.

We have a habit of concentrating on the negative aspects of our lives. It’s like we spend so long working to attain this ultimate idea or pleasure, this presumption that “if i can take it i can make it” to the point of madness in this tireless obsession to reach happiness. You could spend weeks, months, years or decades working towards this without ever truly making it, so never really finding any form of happiness.

In a way, the endless chase could be a form of self preservation. Take for example, love. It is a concept i’ve been theorising about in numerous different forms for years now, but recently come up with the most accurate description i’ve ever come up with. It is the breakdown of self preservation, a fundamental breakdown of this basic evolutionary need to survive, born from a sort of predictable nature of existence.

This desire for structure has created a society of predictable entities, simply because thats the easiest way for us to live and love throughout life. It is the key to preservation, for if you see all the possible moves across the chess board, because then you can’t slip up.

Love is a questioning of this notion. It’s takes the concept of “self” out of the equation. You are giving the keys to everything you are, your pain, your joy, your pleasure and wander to someone else, then hoping they don’t go and drive it off the end of the cliff. I’ve always been enamoured by this idea, because its completely backwards to what we are designed as a species to do, yet so many people do it everyday.

What makes you question your overreaching need for self preservation?

We have a need to preserve ourselves, but a far more overpowering need is to thrive. We need to thrive because then and only then do we get to truly live. We have all been through some form of pain- a constant, overbearing weight you think you’re “supposed” to carry around, that you’re “supposed” to be exhausted at the end of the day while left with a stomach turning pain that you achieved nothing with yet another day. We are told that life “should” be painful, for without pain there is no beauty. But what you are “supposed” to do with it? That is entirely up to you. Hence I write.

I write. You paint, you build, you love. We need to thrive in order to live a life far outside the realms of what we see and what we believe. We thrive for the desire in your heart and the desire that is bursting from the very soul that drives you.

Driving you to what? To happiness- to success- to love?. Whatever it might be, we need to thrive and in the right situation and in the right headspace, the simple act of showing up every minute of everyday, working on yourself, being the best version of yourself is all you can ask of yourself.

For sure you could live to preserve life. Witness the structure laid out in front of you and take the steps as they are presented to you. See the walls laid out around you, make you bed and watch them close in. Be happy with what you got because the alternative is question your life, to question where you are and what you’re supposed to be doing. A population of free thinking, critical thinking people is scary.

Why? Because then you have a group of individuals that are learning and sharing with each other- to then eventually and inevitably become a vastly superior version of the people that went into that very group. Those people that went in reluctant, curious about what would happen, nervous about being judged, feeling like they were worthy only of ridicule as they opened the door of possibility, the idea that maybe they could be more, after continuously having it thrown back in their face and the door slammed with that sam unmistakable thud.

Without believing you live in a world where you could thrive in your creativity and your artistry, and not even having the mental tools to fight for this right, we will only preserve the constant cycle, the endless loop of nothing we call existence. Self preservation has the means to be powerful, but to thrive could be so much more.

So live, not only to sustain life, but to thrive.

Yours, with love as always.

D.R x