It’s good to have a dream or a goal in life, but it’s important to remember that achieving it is probably not as fulfilling as you imagine it to be. All things diverge, we are not as separate as we feel. Whatever journey you are on, you can find fulfillment along the way, but never simply in the destination. Cutting corners or getting lucky probably makes it all the more unsatisfying and potentially traumatic. True fulfillment is found in the moment you are in, the moment that never ends, the moment that holds everything, the moment that is continually expanding. I have the job I always wished for, and I can tell you the grass is not greener. I could be making more money, I could be more celebrated or respected, but I don't think that would make me any ‘happier’. The music industry operates within the same societal structures as all others, it is just as much an institution as school. Focus on the journey, not the destination, don’t hide from your emotions, face them. Let them take their course. That’s necessary for understanding and clearing them away, and there will be more beneath, layers and layers of unacknowledged truths. But to be present, means to acknowledge and be grateful for all the love and grace that you ARE experiencing, the sensation of being alive, with a diverse array of life existing at the same time. Pretty much nothing actually is what it seems to be from a distance. Success in your dream job, relationship, identity etc may buy you more of a feeling of control, but probably not happiness if you’re anything like me. Not in this dystopian nightmare. One life lesson that yoga helps you to acquire, is to focus on the process, truly live the process, not the destination. Listening within to your actual state, and what is occurring right now, what you are receiving, what you are generating and projecting. I have also noticed this kind of connection through a deep listening practice, which involves listening in stillness to everything in audible range- listening to it and visualising it within the space/time continuum. That is a surprisingly powerful practice which appears to be very beneficial to your mental health, so calming, characterful and real, quite magical. I have been going through a dark phase recently and I only see it now, I’ve been trying to swallow some jagged-edged pills. I have no dream anymore. I have let go of the visions I painted. I got to the situation I set out to get to, far quicker than I expected (I set the bar very low), I'm here, and the same things suck for the same reasons. By the time you attain your dream you may have already lived most of your life, only to find that in your core it changes nothing. By the time you get there you may have changed so much that there’s nothing you want less. We are forced and conditioned into a way of living that is ultimately unnatural, no facet of this construct will complete you. Abundance is here, it is everywhere, it is inside, we just have to develop the tools to access it. We have to conform to society’s rules for our own security... that has caused me pain for my whole life.
Now I look back in fondness... running away from school to go to the beach or the park, crying in nature, and then sneaking back into my room to finish my new songs; driving to my friend’s house every evening after school to record songs; turning my room into a studio for the entirety of the Easter holidays from college; being in a band for five years; all the open mics and weird nights in York, initiation into festival season, psychedelics, the summer holiday when I recorded my first electronica album just before my year abroad in Toulouse (again thanks to the willingness of a friend to put the time and resources into recording me), the songs I wrote in France, the excited production sprees when I finally got a DAW, the final year of uni when I should have been studying but mainly was having loads of fun with a sampler and a loop pedal... The fucking end of uni… All that time that I spent making music purely because I wanted to, because it felt so real and vital. It turns out that my brain works one way, and the world works another. I am still walking the same path I always have artistically, the only hurdle left is myself.
Now I look back in fondness... running away from school to go to the beach or the park, crying in nature, and then sneaking back into my room to finish my new songs; driving to my friend’s house every evening after school to record songs; turning my room into a studio for the entirety of the Easter holidays from college; being in a band for five years; all the open mics and weird nights in York, initiation into festival season, psychedelics, the summer holiday when I recorded my first electronica album just before my year abroad in Toulouse (again thanks to the willingness of a friend to put the time and resources into recording me), the songs I wrote in France, the excited production sprees when I finally got a DAW, the final year of uni when I should have been studying but mainly was having loads of fun with a sampler and a loop pedal... The fucking end of uni… All that time that I spent making music purely because I wanted to, because it felt so real and vital. It turns out that my brain works one way, and the world works another. I am still walking the same path I always have artistically, the only hurdle left is myself.
