I've been thinking about how we're drawn to spending time on particular things. Passions, curiosities, practices — whatever it is for you.
We might tell ourselves we're working on the thing, getting better at it, improving, learning. But maybe the thing is actually working on us. Like a container for something we need. Perhaps even a way for our subconscious to practice parts of ourselves that we don't know how to address head-on.
For me, it's scent. I was good at maths, so I ended up doing analytical, left-brain work. But I was always drawn to scent and all its invisible, ephemeral, primal strangeness. I thought I was learning perfumery. But now I know it was helping me reconnect with the instinctive, bodily parts of myself that I'd been missing.
Etel Adnan said, 'We are always becoming.' What are you drawn to spend time on? Are you working on it, or is it working on you?
Em
