A person is a creative thing; one who engages in the process of building, crafting, curating and designing. We do so through a process of control, a creative ritual of shifting and altering our experiences, our homes, our lives, our bodies, and our crafts. This is not a control which is perverse or pathological, though it is all encompassing and a rooted function of our engagement with the world. By our very design, we are imaginative beings, we explore possibilities, we develop wants, needs and other desires; we bring them to life. 

It is also a very ordinary thing that, in the process of our dreaming, we become burdened by the suspicion that we are beyond our scope. We pair our imaginations with magical thinking that is both natural and often necessary in developing unbridled visions of our lives or circumstances. The trouble begins when this magical thinking is the bridge between the practical process of working toward our vision. The trouble begins when we count on magic to bring it about.

Now I’ve spoken before on the risks of counting on the ‘supernatural’ or ‘magic’ to bring about our desires. It is in that conversation that I suggested the supernatural to be an unfortunate recipient of our agency, where we rely on the unknown to do what we believe we cannot do ourselves. This is not that conversation. Instead, this is a conversation about ownership. This is about reconnecting the bridge we built through our imaginations.

It was made apparent to me some months ago that many of my goals and ambitions were attributed to a life so far disconnected that I could no longer call it mine. It belonged to some pseudo version of myself, even though it felt to be mine when I crafted it. Truthfully, the visions I held were something I could only imagine after the greatest shifts in self, the version of me I have yet to be but hope to become. The vision I made was so distant from now that I designed it in some other realm, my conscious mind unaware that I was building a separate world for someone else entirely.

You see, we think of world-building as though it is this separate thing; we build our paradise, we call it ‘the life’. The reality is, if ‘the life’ is to be yours, it will actually be titled ‘your life’, ‘my life’, ‘this life’. It is not some distinct thing, belonging to some parallel version of you which has been far more fortunate, or far more brave. 

In fact, to get there, it will have to be you. No, not a braver, more successful other thing; a future thing, an imagined thing. It will have to be you who overcomes the worries, the worst-case dreams and theories of endings. It will have to be this you, the only you you are right now, that will encounter the challenges of the one you strive to be. 

The greatest barrier to progress is the assumption that there’s some missing piece, some magic, something that will change, and then you are smarter, safer, braver than you are, and maybe then you’ll be the way you’ve always wanted to be. No, the greatest barrier between you and the life you want is the belief that you must be different; that there is some otherworldly, extraordinary version you’d have to become before you get there. 

It became obvious to me far later than I’d like that I was giving my goals away to the belief that my life was some separate experience. I must’ve imagined in my pursuit of new lives that I was to be the recipient of divine intervention, a shift in consciousness, a sudden overnight change that made me better, more willing, less afraid. It took no real thought when establishing these truths, as the vision became further distanced by my sense of stagnancy and my grip on the belief that I would require fundamental changes before I could begin my pursuit.

My only option was that I would be changed by some great thing, and then, and only then, could I begin. It was beyond my attention to say that I would need to face my fears to get what I wanted, as my idealism and my imagination could only fathom that bravery was a lack of fear. I had assigned to this future vision that I would be better equipped to tackle the troubles of my future, and that this wouldn’t be done through the perilous path of trial and error that it is destined for.  Perhaps it’s foolish to have assumed that my distant vision would require great strides, not small, but terrifying steps towards it. 

It is not the life we seek but your life, this one, the one full of fear and passion, all the same. It is the imperfect, awkward choreography we come to learn in our pursuit that builds possibility; that builds momentum. Still, when we encounter our ideals, we must remind ourselves that it is us who will be tasked with the path between our present and ideal realities. These are not foreign things but instead are sites through which we forge connections. You are the common denominator which will find a way, some way between them. The world you’re building is this one, the life you seek is already here.