LIFE AS THE INFORMER
When thinking of the ebb and flow of life, we only use those terms when we find ourselves centred. But what about when things get messy? When do we gain the courage to face chaos and recognise that disorder is inevitable? There’s an apparent resistance—culturally, socially—to seeing life as something inherently disordered. We cling to structure, but structure is an illusion, a collective invention that has shaped human existence for millennia.
I’d go as far as to say that Homo sapiens are wired to bond with others, even through aggression. We externalise our emotional tantrums, using other people as outlets. Even violence, in its most antisocial form, requires a target. We cannot be aggressive or violent in complete isolation—something always absorbs that force. And that extends beyond human relationships. Just look at the mess we’ve made of the planet, even its orbit.
And what’s there to think about violence? I think it’s underrated. Not in a way that glorifies it, but in how we fail to grasp its cost—physical, emotional, and social. The more unmeasured it is, the worse. And no, I don’t fetishise the collapse of society, the apocalyptic orchestration of a world falling apart. I don’t find any satisfaction in dystopian doom. I’m not interested in dualistic thinking unless it serves me—unless it helps me move forward. And moving forward means bringing others into my process, not cutting them out.
The real issue is that we don’t see our lives as the most potent source of insight and evolution. Maybe that’s something only people who have fought some battles understand. Mainstream culture would call them “late bloomers.” I take issue with that term, though—the assumption that personal growth should be bound by time instead of experience is ridiculous.
Fighting the Oxygen Thieves
Now, in my early thirties, I’m starting to see it—the way my most self-punishing behaviours are just symptoms. A neurosis that corners me and chokes me, like breathing in recycled oxygen with no real air left. But here’s the thing—it’s an illusion. These forces only stand tall because I let them. The moment I see them for what they are—limited, exaggerated, flimsy—their power shrinks.
I get what people mean when they talk about life’s cycles. I caught myself looking at my defining practices—circus, physical activity, writing. They’ve been in my life for as long as I can remember. And despite all my efforts to become someone else, not even my unconscious let me stray too far from them. The things that have structured me are embedded in me. And maybe that’s the point—perhaps that’s the foundation of everything.
And that’s where we should be looking. Not outside. Not ahead. But back—at our own histories. That’s where the sense is. The raw elements of who we are. The answers to our anxieties, our fears. The outlets we didn’t even realise were there.
Handstands & The Weight of Meaning
I’ve had the privilege of trying out many things, of sticking with some long enough for my muscles to need movement for my brain to get its chemical fix. And I see the pattern—when I’ve been buried under depression, suddenly the weight starts to lift when my practice is full-on. When my body moves, I cannot ignore the strain, the burn, the fight to stay balanced upside down. The moment I’m in a handstand, nothing else matters. That fight becomes the centre of my world.
And yet, I grew so disappointed with it. A handstand doesn’t pay bills. It doesn’t sustain me. And that’s the problem—when life is reduced to survival, to productivity, we lose sight of the small, “unimportant” things that tether us to ourselves. A handstand is everything in the moment I’m doing it. The meaning is in the attempt. In the doing.
What comes out of it? A defining action that holds no monetary value. It is pure balance—the body against gravity. And because I lost that balance for a while, reattempting it after years suddenly makes it clear: the things I believe in need practice. They need care. Without that, I’m outsourcing my identity to a thinking head with an immobilised body.
If I grew up with a thinking body and mind, losing the balance between the two means losing my way.
And I refuse to keep turning everything I do into a tool for sur
