Creation

This is, without a doubt, not the last time I will be writing about Creation. Underlying my interest in Creation is its basis in Motivation which itself is an alternative lens on Purpose. My journey is a search for purpose.

Last year I attended a large scale immersive camping production experience and my experience there changed the way I thought about the world.

Up to that point my driving motivation in life had been a search for Recognition. This motivation was rooted in negativity: a feeling of acknowledgement deserved but unmet in my professional past, partly rooted in childhood trauma; a thirst for revenge, chasing the prospect of a moment of validation from those who had power over me in the past; a need to prove, unambiguously, quantitatively, that I was better. This motivation was toxic and, I knew, could not be satisfied. The Valley preys on those with ravaneous egos desperate to prove themselves, but the Valley’s also shown that these egos cannot be satisfied. That, counterintuitively, as success grows the thirst for validation attenuates rather than tempers. A friend and mentor described this to me as “Valley Rage”: no matter how high up the ladder you climb, there’s always another fucker one rung above you, and the higher you are the clearer and more personal the jealousy and resentment feels in your heart. Having professionally come up at the premier institutions of both high finance and disruptive technology I had developed an intuition that, generally speaking, the more successful the person the more miserable they were.

For as far back as I remember this was knowledge which was known to me, which I internalized, and I summarily ignored. Although it might be impossible to satiate motivation rooted in negativity - birthed and nurtured from a place of darkness - in the first order, I told myself this motivation was powerful and pure. That the great idols I looked up to themselves held darkness in their heart and that this darkness was what pushed them to superlative outcomes. “I may never feel like enough,” I thought, “but the pursuit to prove I am enough will take me far.”

Now I search for a new root of purpose. One which is based in positivity - Creation, Expression, Humanity. My search for acknowledgement remains; as humans I believe we are biologically wired to seek acknowledgement from our peers. But its flavor has changed. Where previously I sought acknowledgement of myself, now I seek acknowledgement of my expression. I’ve been inspired by seeing people toil and labor not for financial gain or social fame but rather for passion and actualization. I do not understand where their drive comes from. I have watched people create, destroy, and build again. Manifestations of iterative development are most alive not in a San Francisco warehouse startup coworking space but rather in uncommercial Nevada deserts filled with people, their dreams and the shipping containers filled with building materials they dragged in.