Ever since I started work, something in me has radically departed its core, in search of bold new worlds that may have never existed before. Part of me always wanted to create something worthy. And I thought I could find that in an office.
As much as I tried, I never quite felt as accomplished, which explains why I end up taking too many side projects. I’ve learned to work too much with too many limitations, mostly monetary. A born innovator, I began to remove assumptions one by one…
Assumption: Don’t piss off the boss
Assumption: Don’t piss off your colleagues
Assumption: Don’t do stupid things
Assumption: I need to save face
Assumption: I’m mostly right
Assumption: I can’t afford expensive things
Each time I challenged an assumption, I gained a new learning curve. I learnt how to piss off the boss, how to piss off colleagues, how to do stupid things and get away with it, how to lose face and still manage to survive, how to stay mostly wrong but get to talk about it, and that Alfa Romeo.
Now, why doesn’t anyone tell me that the answers I really want come in the form of random sets of occurrences that come one after the other as though you were suddenly taken up into heaven and got to meet the Son of God himself, and then sent back down to begin life again.
I have a weird admission that it does happen only to people who avail themselves so much that the system cracks at one point in time. I think in physics this is called entropy, but I really don’t know much about it. Something about energy or the lack of it.
But anyway, I fulfilled two big parts of my being by convincing to someone that life really is worth living the way our gut says it should. I think people ignore too much of their gut. I think everyone’s gut isn’t a magic dice. It’s got a lot of potential, and it tells all sorts of things from what clothes to wear to what person we should date.
Sometimes, it tells us to keep going in one direction and never stop even though it may hurt sometimes. THAT’S the part of gut that I think people are avoiding.
I think a lot of people know what it’s like to chase something and get it and be utterly satisfied with the entire experience. I believe ultimately, chasing God has to become that pursuit. But I also believe people chase God in different ways.
Mostly, we all chase God through the purpose in life we believe we have been created to achieve. And I feel that God was the one who put that gut in us that tells us what that purpose is. It gets activated the moment we awaken to consciousness as a toddler, and it doesn’t stop chasing us until we breathe our last breath.
Now, the problem is that, because we already have the impression of chasing something that’s attainable and deeply fulfilling, we continue chasing things that are somewhat off-course, purely for the sake of the chase, instead of obeying our gut. This includes things like chocolate, the new M1 supercar, your very survival, and the fairy godmother.
Because, frankly, at times our gut can only point to things that are faraway and scary and intimidating, and it has no concept of manners or common sense. It just points to something big, and everything is beyond us.
I’ve been learning that my gut has always been right. I’ve screwed up trying to follow it, but my gut has been right all along. In fact, it doesn’t matter if I’ve screwed up or not. It doesn’t matter if I win big while doing it. All it matters is that I obey my gut, and live to tell the story of what happened while obeying it.
And I believe that’s what God placed us here on earth for, sometimes - to tell the story of how we followed our gut, messed up, made some wins, and survived the whole journey to the very end.
Somehow, that’s extremely satisfying, knowing that we have obeyed our gut. I do not know why.
Letters From The Equator