Image — The Abyss of Hell, Sandro-Botticelli (Dante’s Inferno)
Soundtrack — Fallin’ Down, Julian Dyne ft. Parks
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This week’s article is intended to illustrate the challenge of ascension or descension in emerging. So, let me begin with the question?
How do you make yourself memorable?
Anonymous : They may not remember my name but they always remember two distinct things; my consistency in the colour of lip stick I use and the clothes that I wear.
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference — Elis Wiesel
From this quote has spawned an appreciation for bad news, the precise quote that comes to mind reads, ‘ There is no such thing as bad publicity’, often associated with Phineas T. Barnum, it acts as an indicator that somebody cares enough about what you do, to publicly disagree with it. So for the sake of this article let’s appropriate Barnum for our own benefit.
“The opposite of progress is not failure, but stagnation.”
With an ironic paralysing fear of coasting, can we first acknowledge that the world and everything within it are in a state of continuous renewal. So to stay stagnant is to be eventually left behind in evolution. Right? It’s blunt but the unfortunate reality.
It’s this precise mentality that breeds the abundant sense of paranoia and unhealthy rate of consumerism that plagues the western world. In an attempt to appear productive and progressive, we publicise and dramatise incremental rationalisations, hopeful that we can deceive the world into believing we are a limitless fountain of innovation. But, let’s be honest it works every single time.
Ironically, we are (hopefully) simultaneously emerging in terms of relevance in the discussion of credible voices in our fields, while we descend into an unsustainable rate of production. It’s time for that to change. As we steer our thoughts back on track, Dante described the descent through the nine rings of hell as a progression of torturous states of existence. Regardless of his graduation to the next stage of hell, there was a clear act of whom he encountered and the justified qualifications for residence at each stage.
Have you already emerged? Are you trying to justify a title you have already earned? Why?
Simply put, emerging is not a one stop ride, deconstruct your stages of emerging, what are the requirements for each stage, if you have already proven yourself in one area, move forward! Whose consent are you waiting for?
It’s a saddening thought that our progress is inadvertently restricted by our inability to see beyond our own self-deprecation, typically at our own expense.
Before I leave you with an abundance of self-reflective questions, may I ask, where does value take its place in the desire for progress?
After all memory is at its optimum when layered with multiple engagements.
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