Sugar Words

I have been exploring people who did not have a single trajectory in their careers and lives. People who have zig-zagged their way to reach…reach a place they defined, instead of what they were told. When I look around and find everyone very sure of where they want to reach; being able to define themselves and their work in one clear sentence, it worries me.

You ask why?

Because I have realised that there is no single destination I want to reach. There are multiple stops I want to make, and take something from each stop: some knowledge, some inspiration, and let that decide my next stop. Which also means that when someone asks me what I am or what I want, I cannot answer them unless they are willing to get coffee and talk about it as the sun sets, and by the end of it our legs are crossed and we have emptied the whole coffee pot. To the disappointment of recruiters, I cannot answer this honestly in a minute.

The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time. ~T.S. Eliot

While it sounds romantic, like backpacking across beautiful landscapes, it also means that I have to, in the process, let go of my many vanity ambitions and relearn the meaning of success and wellbeing, as I take on this journey.

There is an idea floating around on the internet: what brings us fulfilment is what we liked as kids, when none of the ideas of defining yourself has seeped into you. Back then, the only tools you had were curiosity and seeking joy. Which is not to say you should start using crayons on the wall, but rather to explore and find the essence of the activity. Asking: what was the reason a simple activity brought you joy?

Every time I am excited to do a little craft project or say write this article, I am asking which part of me feels nourished by this and how I can take this into something larger than me. I am still finding clues in and around me to answer that question. My way to get closer to the answer is to search for people who have had unusual paths.

I very recently came across the work of Mindy Seu, and have been fangirling ever since on how she is unafraid, unperturbed by the ways of society and just decides to be a beginner in different fields she explores. That very act of being a beginner, and the knowledge that she brings from other projects and aspects of her life, is what makes her shine in those rooms.

So, if we were to, in fact, make these many stops, would it not eventually seem all cohesive? Because aren’t we technically drawing the lines as we go from one place to another? A personal map of your being on this earth. I say this because there is a sense of wanting to create a path of my own instead of just catering to something. Which then requires unassailable determination to face the unknown, of what the next turn would be or what the next pit stop would not be. And the acceptance that it would always be a process, and never a final product. Thank god, I would stay a human and not transmute into a product.

When I let go of this idea that my ambitions would fit in an already existing map, I think about how it is also related to letting go of the idea of causality. Maria Popova says in Now Yourself: The Elusive Science of What the Present Moment Is Made of and How It Makes You Who You Are, “Causality, this model implies, is simply an interpretation based on our limited perception: The flow from past to future… rather than being a fundamental feature of the universe… emerges as a secondary consequence of our inability to see the full picture.”

Then, if I, a mere mortal, am unable to see the full picture, standing tiptoed on my current stop, eyes squinted, and asking every person who crosses me what it is like, only to receive a different description each time, do I not just start walking? Maybe I will find an enchanted forest that reveals the secrets of what I am to contribute to this world. Maybe that itself would be the key? Or maybe I will find people along the way, and I do not have to be a pirate in this lonely sea.

In Bayo Akomolafe’s words. “We — together with multiple others — are part of a web of life, not just stuck on it like a hapless fly-turned-spider-breakfast, but the very web itself in its fluctuations and rich complexity. And movement, the slightest gesture, sends tremors through the veins of our never-ending reiterative becomings.”

The becoming, you see, is like the seasons, along with added climate change, which is to say it is abrupt and there is no way to truly predict. But what you can do is be resilient and remind yourself what you are again and again. Changing the script without the experience of being a scriptwriter is truly a courageous task, and it means you have to surrender yourself, and surrender the ego, and the titles, and everything you thought was necessary for you to be someone in this world.

When abruptness is seen as a feature, it then suddenly feels like part of this grand choreography of life. Because how do you say it’s abrupt when you don’t truly know what’s next? Isn’t abruptness a broken flow, and you can only know the flow of anything, even a simple sentence, if you know the next word? The mischief in choosing a life and career where you accept that you yourself will have to be a cartographer, and spend a lot of time explaining to your family and friends what exactly you do, only for them to forget the next second, is that the abruptness does not exist; it is simply a curve in the line of your map.

For the world, you can remain an enigma of someone born in the 18th century who is a poet and a scientist, and their ideas flow from one part of life to another, enriching everything all at once.