Dear Great ones,

To obsess over output is to deny yourself life.

The I WANT IT NOW culture incentivises output over the experience that creates it.

Obtaining the output then, is often the goal and so the experience that produces the output is wished away - to be eradicated by time. Better yet, if avoidable, let them not experience the process at all - fast forward to the end.

And so the culture wishes to have things they do not deserve.

Ironically, the experience is the gift, the output is the reminder that you embraced the gift of life, the output is a token, the output is a material memory of experience gone by.

Reaping the output without sowing the experience required, creates an empty vessel shrouded in trinkets. You seek the accolades without the work, you crave a façade as you fear the experience but want the rewards of its output.

What happens if we take your trinkets away?

It is the process itself that makes you, not the output. Invariably output serves to reveal its creators experience.

We know then that the experience is where the value lies, and that output is a false God, glorified by the NOW culture that idealises money and status over meaning and truth - a culture that knows the price of everything but the value of nothing - a culture that is blind to the very thing it seeks, a culture that looks everywhere except in front of it, the answer is the work.

Life is alchemy, transmute yourself into your work and watch your output fulfil itself, it will arrive when it is ready. Live in the now, but do not want everything NOW, for you will wish away the gift of life, the gift to experience the creation of the material memories you seek to have.

The shortcut is the work.

I guess if you’re reading this then you’re already one of the Greats.

Your deepest well wisher,

TGM