Fuel
How do you hold yourself accountable to your life’s mission? (Should you find it helpful to frame things in such grand terms – and I think I do).
Surely a step in the right direction is to seize moments where you find yourself inspired to clarify and articulate your values and aspirations.
Then we have the added value of sharing these insights with people who will both hold you accountable and potentially help guide you to places you wouldn’t discover on your own (particularly if you’re so fortunate as to have a supportive, encouraging and wickedly smart community). And better yet, such exchanges are typically infectious! They may inspire others to similarly examine their own passions and priorities, which is a beautiful thing.
As I sit on the precipice of beginning my second Master’s degree (in Philosophy at King’s College London), and as I continue to hone my Research-Creation PhD proposal which will carry me through a half-decade after that, I’m excited by the exercise of clarifying the purpose and thrust of the work that I’m doing in my life.
Such clarity, found and solidified through saying these things aloud (or here, in writing), is bound to provide an enormous amount of motivation; released as a hissing, bubbly substance; a fuel of action.
It would ignite the engines of my mission to understand, engage with and build upon the work that other thinkers (philosophers, neuroscientists, artists…) have done in the areas I’m interested in.
Yet I wonder if I’ve only glimpsed the fullness of the joy and significance offered in this work…
This exploration is aimed at making the world a better place. It’s aimed at helping people. It’s aimed at generating, discovering, and sharing new knowledge. It amounts to the creation of an artifact that could change a person’s life. Beyond that, it is the journey! Years of research into film as perhaps the single most powerful medium for the exploration of non-conceptual and pre-linguistic territory. It is the endeavour to make philosophy so accessible, practical and essential that it might fulfill the great promise of that word:
Philosophy | Philosophia (Greek) – “love of wisdom”
A love of wisdom. It’s remarkable how much is contained in that. Wisdom pertains to the way that we navigate our lives. It recognizes that there are things you can understand (about your mind, the world, others, time…) that can help you navigate this predicament in a better way. (And in every sense of the word “better”).
What a promise! One too often marred by the dense, dull and pretentious abstractions which shelter under the name of philosophy and smear its portrait. Let us return to philosophy which has something important and helpful to say to those moving through life with anxiety, depression, trauma, and addiction – and yet just as much to those abound with a sense of wide-eyed wonder and curiosity that wants to leap right out of their chests with a yearning to understand the depth of mind and nature.
Remember, philosophy is a love of this journey! It expresses a passion for this incredible happening. The journey to wisdom isn’t a duty, but something for effortless relishing. When you really look at life, doesn’t it seem so? Life is already set up with this curriculum in place. It is already structured (elegantly!) to offer a string of endless opportunities to discover ourselves and the world, and through the collision of those two things, to grow into better people. (This, we call experience – in all senses of the word).
I think I only appreciate this on the most superficial level. I can write it here, and I can say it with a certain amount of conviction and sincerity, but I believe that it’s worthwhile setting my priorities straight – so the fuel can burn, burn, burn away.