While I take my sweet time to finish some of my other articles, I wanted to share hopeful and inspiring findings in my daily life. I’ve recently had a flood of experiences getting to know the young future creatives that will take on the fate of our industry, the ones that one day will be our leaders. With recharged hope, I wanted to share something that would deeply help those youngins to take as armor into the unknowable new year.
When you are lost and looking for an answer in desperation, suddenly much magnetizes towards you with an answer. Folks like myself who inherently have less patience with stubborn opinions choose too hastily the first few offers thinking it is that light that was at the end of this long tunnel. Sometimes we choose the most polished looking answer not knowing the actual contents behind the patina! However if you calm your heart and take the time to entertain and lull on every answer, the consistent and genuine vibration of the truth answer will have already earned your trust without you knowing. This is how I found Ralph Waldo Emerson. Here is a short excerpt from the first few pages of his book “The Conduct of Life”.
Here was my question that was well stated in his book:
[…]But let us honestly state the facts. Our America has a bad name for superficialness. Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it. The Spartan, embodying his religion in his country, dies before its majesty without a question. […]Our Calvinists, in the last generation, had something of the same dignity. They felt that the weight of the Universe held them down to their place. What could they do? Wise men feel that there is something which cannot be talked or voted away, —a strap or belt which girds the world. […] The Greek Tragedy expressed the same sense: “Whatever is fated, that will take place. The great immense mind of Jove is not to be transgressed.”
Savages cling to a local god of one tribe or town. The broad ethics of Jesus were quickly narrowed to village theologies, which preach an election or favoritism. And, now and then, and amiable parson, like Jung Stilling, or Robert Huntington, believes in the Pistor even-Providence, which whenever the good man wants a dinner, makes that somebody shall knock at his door, and leave a half-dollar. But Nature is no sentimentalist,—does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust. The cold inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons. The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leaders and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda,—these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs.
It’s real funny that in the book Emerson offers the answer earlier than the question mentioned above:
In our first steps to gain our wishes, we come upon immovable limitations.[…] After many experiments, we find that we must begin earlier,—at school. But the boys and girls are not docile; we can make nothing of them. We decide that they are not of good stock. We must begin our reform earlier still,—at generation: that is to say, there is Fate, or laws of the world.
But if there be irresistible dictation, this dictation understands itself. If we must accept Fate, we are not less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character. This is true, and that other is true. But our geometry cannot span these extremes points, and reconcile them. What to do? By obeying each thought frankly, by harping, or if you will, pounding on each string, we learn at last its power. By the same obedience to other thoughts, we learn theirs, and then comes some reasonable hope of harmonizing them. We are sure, that, though we know not how, necessity does comport with liberty, the individual with the world, my polarity with the spirit of the times. The riddle of the age has for each a private solution. If one would study his own time, it must be by this method of taking up in turn each of the leading topics which belong to our scheme of human life, and by firmly stating all that is agreeable to experience on one, and doing the same justice to the opposing facts in the others, the true limitations will appear. Any excess of emphasis, on one part, would be corrected, and a just balance would be made. [End of excerpt]
So there. Take it.
I found the answer to a happy fulfilling life, well, at least the formula for planting the seed of a happy fulfilling life. It was with Waldo lol, a life synchronized and reigned by reality where we truly are where you give love to every bit that comes across to you, unbothered by the exterior world. Find purpose by seeing how your natural talent that springs from genuine joy can serve the larger future of humanity. No need to start big. This can be in your craft or hobby at home, your industry, your friends, your family. The inertia of this positive movement will soon be felt in other areas of your life, lifting you up to even higher purposes and greater fulfillment. Then you will be somehow closer to the truth of reality than you were before. This is what I try to live by anyway.
Does this article give you a new context to the famous phrase and intellectual property Where is Waldo? in times like today? Okay I think I’ve written enough. To anyone who is facing a new life into the unknown, I hope that this message can stay with you when you need it.
Always,
Sunmin