"being through doing"

The heart of George Town, from the rooftop of the Chowrasta Market. (on assignment in Penang, circa 2016)

4 · 10 December ‘23

it’s the end of the year - for me, usually a season of broody contemplation. a heady mix of looking back to take inventory and getting a feel of what’s to come in the new year. often it spirals into negative chatter that’s hard to tune out of, a static noise that stays audible through the pomp and cheer of the festive season. but still, the impulse is to reflect and ruminate.

i’m currently going through old writings - it’s a little red notebook that contains mostly moving passages and reminders to self from 2016. in reading these entries today, i found a common thread weaving through notes from two talks i attended that year, about five months apart: one featuring Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey and the other, the successful metaphysics icon Joey Yap.

for context, Larry was sharing about the early seeds of the Burning Man community, its journey of radical self-expression, participation and meaning making. Joey’s talk on the other hand was a more informative and transactional one - he was on tour, and people paid to hear him speak.

they both advocated the notion of “being through doing“. about it boiling down to the actions we take. about the value of knowing what we don’t want being as important as knowing what we do want. and how oftentimes the clarity and beauty comes only after a step (or a series of them) are taken.

in the seven years since those journal entries, i’d like to think i’ve lived by this ethos as best i could. accepting that i won’t always know what the next best step is, or even how i feel about my next step: but always trusting in my own well of self-knowledge, of lived experiences and abundance.