Once upon a time, Descartes articulated a simple and famous philosophy: I think, therefore I am.
His idea was simple: Life is ambiguous, thoughts can be interpreted in wildly different ways; the entirety of the senses can be fooled, turned into illusions, and at the end of the day there is so little that actually can be known in this world that really, all you can say with certainty about who you are and where you come from is nothing, really – but as you think, therefore you exist.
I’ve pondered this insight for a while, and it makes sense to me – but in my life, I feel that a small and slightly less abstract addition applies:
I create, therefore I am.
It’s no secret to a lot of people that I do create, and quite a bit – it shapes my identity, who I am seen as to the world, and a whole range of other things that are inextricably linked to a public persona.
In slightly more practical terms though, creating takes up the time that life is made of, and that time in turn shapes the person you are and who you may become.
Spending hours creating a single video unquestionably shapes your day, for example; how could it not, if it structures how you choose to experience your hours?
Thinking about the content of what you’d like to say unquestionably makes a little part of your brain rewire, reset, refresh, and think about new possibilities; how could it not, if it reshapes the way you think about the world and how you look at it?
People measure life a little differently, even as biology and the archetypes (weird phrasing maybe, but I like that stuff haha) bind us to the common experiences and the life tasks; I create, therefore I am – I define myself by that act of creation, I think of life as a succession of creative experiences, and I create often for hours, always a little faster, a little more meaningfully, and hopefully a little more engagingly.
I create, therefore I am: That seems to be the seed that life has handed me – my nature, my personality, who I am and who I was put to be in this universe. There are so many things that revolve around that central seed, that have evolved around it as it’s geminated – not always in the best possible of ways, and sometimes with some distractions – but it’s continued to go on, moving to that nature.
Different things make us feel alive and in the moment – for me, this is one of them.
