Hard work isn't so much an idea as it is a self-imposed and glorified state of being. To me, it's more of a philosophical concept. I'm writing my own views on this much used term often considered synonymous with success.

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Why? Because I've made some rather difficult trade-offs. I have sacrificed time and potential money for choice and authenticity. There are no guarantees in life so I figured I'd go back to the old drawing board and method, the only one I know that works for sure, and that is following my gut instinct - despite also knowing it hasn't exactly served me well. At least not in the ways people would understand. Is it easy to disobey people with more experience and success than you? No. It's really not. Especially when by not following their (mostl unsolicited) advice you aren't exactly in a spectacular place. And yet, what if you know, deep within, that you are making the more emotionally intelligent albeit difficult decision for yourself? It's going to cost you this strange, obscure dream, which obviously felt false and wrong, but you're going to end up in a more comfortable place, one where you are able to feel like yourself and be authentic. Where you can be crippled over with pain but at least the pain, the discomfort, the chaos - at least it's real.

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I was going to go over my decision-making these past few years but you can find out all about that elsewhere if you're really interested. Let's stick to hard work.

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I've come to the stage in my life, which is rather lonely but one which does make sense to me: that despite the difficulty in not agreeing with what is defined as success by society, which does come at a (at times massive) cost, it feels better in the long-term to find one's own definition of success. It won't come easy. And no this isn't the lazy answer of no effort. I'm mentally ill. Again, no that is not an excuse. There is a lot of darkness, a lot of self-hate, a crippling sense of doom, and the seductive alternative of letting it all go and submerging deep into the void of nothingness. I mean, no one tells you before being born that you're about to enter a war zone. In fact, you can live a great part of your life completely oblivious to the fact that you are any type of warrior. In my case I realised I had to be one when I made the decision to first create my own separate identity, distinct from my familial background or citizenship, and second when I became aware that to make my dreams a reality I would have to fight for gender equality. And lastly, when I realised that to freely express my views regarding peace, human rights, and feminism, I would need to protect myself. Having head-dived into the stone cold ocean of depression more than once, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, really, because in some ways it's worse than death. Still, the depression has taught me who I am, or rather, who I wish to be.

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If it's true that the bridge between reality and dreams is hard work then it's also true that we must look at what that bridge is for each individual person crossing it. I think at times we like to believe that there is one bridge, in some magical place, which has been crossed by certain people, at a certain time, because they were able to work hard, and we weren't. I agree that discipline and building good habits takes dedication and commitment and that there is a lot to learn from examples of success. However, given my life experience, I have had to spend enormous amounts of time on my own, with medication and a therapist, only to try a bit harder every week to learn not how to work hard to make my dreams a reality, but to first of all, show myself some much needed compassion. To not punish myself for taking care of myself. To acknowledge everything that has been hard. And to protect the fragility of my personality, my empathic nature, my tendency to blame myself and put others first. A lot of it is simply the result of abuse, neglect, trauma, setting very high standards, and feeling like there is no space for error. These are complex issues and I'm not pointing fingers so don't jump to conclusions. My art is not meant to be transparent. Fighting a mental illness became part of that, as did fighting the parts of myself that do not help me fight the illness but rather make it worse. That is a tormenting and brutal battle and much like fatal diseases of many kinds it is a war that again like past trauma I have preferred to hide. 

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Yet, when it comes to the question of hard work, I am willing to bare it all, because the world is too cruel a place if what we can achieve disregards entirely the experience of being human. Yes, I know the ways in which I'm privileged, so much more than such a large section of the global population (honestly I know people who really don't think about it at all and that's fine, I guess) and still, I know what it's like to live a life so isolated and alone because of this perceived privilege and the shame tied with not utilising it to become a shiny star and deliver outstanding results that ultimately one becomes so overwhelmed and morally paraalysed that they sort of exist as a dead corpse. All I want is to remind everyone that I'm human but if I scream it who's going to care, and who's going to understand? So I visit the doctors and take the medication and talk to the therapist I pay for because it's necessary.

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And thank goodness I do because without all of that maybe I'd truly lose sense of the self-worth I worked so hard to gain - comprehension, coherence - because I've spent time away from the race, because I've sought comfort, security, and simplicity, because I've held my lust back, and because, ultimately, I am working hard. So hard it hurts. And I don't want it to hurt. It is not my choice.

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It's just my social conditioning. My compulsions. The way I surivived my life circumstances. How I've played the part I thought the world was asking me to play. How I play the part the world is asking me to play. Everyone does it. Some people write it down or say it out loud and everyone else just gets on with it. I'm sure you know which group I'm in.

 

I lost someone to mental illness. They comitted suicide in one of the worst ways imaginable. A family member. It's an extremely common story and unfortunately it's one that people know about and think: that's tragic. If it happened to me I wouldn't know how to deal with it and if it happened to someone else I wouldn't know how to deal with that. End of discussion.

 

But I've been there. That's why I repeat it so much. This culture of hard work. These circumstances of high-pressure combined with one's unique fingerprint and DNA. I am working really hard to just remain alive and I need to pause and thank myself for that because nothing else will matter or be attainable if I can't allow myself to live.

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And I'm telling you that that is hard work so the next time you look at someone like me or anyone else for that matter and think: why nothing more? Why this but not that? You stop and remember something I've had to remind myself of every day: the hard work we do comes from the human body and mind. We place a lot of emphasis on both, and yet cognitive ability does override skill-based jobs and accomplishments considered valuable to human society. 

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Yet, we know so little about how the billions of neurons in our brains create complex thoughts, emotions, consciousness, memory - it all remains largely unknown. We can and should thank the neuroscientists for their hard work but again they're just working hard using their brains to try and understand the brain. 

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Trying to understand something using something we do not understand. That might just be the human condition.

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And that is really hard work.

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