Creation and the Void Whispered

Creation and the Void whispered in each ear, “Come to the cliff.” I heed the call and jump, and they guaranteed me neither safety nor finality.

It’s a repeated waking dream. I heed the call. Repeatedly. Sometimes I fly, sometimes I fall.

Fly or fall, in the peace and in the chaos of life, I find myself meandering around paths of colour, sometimes direct, sometimes a maze. Some see a chaotic disconnect of disparate distractions, but I see a rich exploration of the human experience. I’m a founder, an entrepreneur, a designer, a storyteller, a traveler, a foodie—labels that only scratch the surface of who I am becoming— or more correctly, unbecoming.

The Journey of Unbecoming

As I navigate through the vast realms of technology, design, spirituality, self, writing, creating, mindfulness, and community building, I'm not merely stacking ideas, projects, roles, titles and notions. What seems like add-on after add-on is in fact a peeling back of layers, stripping away all identity until I reach the core of my being.

It’s through the exploration all my interests, all at once, and pushing my mind beyond the limit of the known that I force myself to detach the chains of identity.

Who am I when all labels of identity are removed? Who am I, uninterrupted? I'm still looking, still uncovering, still peeling back the layers until I strip my sense of “I” so bare that all I'm left with is nothing but my raw, undefinable, naked, pulsating soul.

This paradoxical journey isn't about addition; it's about subtraction. It's about finding that unique signature that is quintessentially me, unadorned neither by worldly conditioning nor self-imposed limitation.

It’s by commanding each parallel universe into one that I get to see the possible and the impossible, the infinite and the contained, the expanse and the void.

Embracing the Multifaceted Self

My varied interests might seem scattered, impossible, unrealistic, maniacal. But as the late Virgil Abloh, my mentor and muse, a true polymath, demonstrated—creativity knows no bounds. Creation is limitless. It thrives on cross-pollination, on the unexpected connections between the disparate.

My ventures—Faster Zebra, Velvet Onion & Friends, the upcoming Often Human podcast, plus the art, the books the games—are not separate pursuits; they’re different facets of the same gem, each reflecting a unique aspect of my central mission: improving all life and elevating the human experience.

The Impermanence of Everything

As I work, create, fly, fall, fail, rebuild, travel, connect, pause, rest, write, recreate and love, I'm embracing the impermanence of everything.

Impermanence isn’t something I fear, but something I lean into, slow dance with, stare into the eyes of. It’s the cliff. It's what makes life colourful, what pushes me to grow, to adapt, to find new ways of being and creating.

Each experience, be it a soaring success or a slap-in-the-face failure, is the stripping back of yet another layer; it’s a tease to make the impermanent permanent.

Finding Power in Doing

All these interests, all these pursuits, converge on a single point: the quest to bring about possibility—for myself and for those in my orbit. It's about finding power; not in titles or achievements, but in the ability to create, to rise, to fall, to collapse, to be held, to retreat, to activate, to connect.

For it’s in the juxtaposed embrace of pain and pleasure, nothingness and everythingness, discomfort and indulgence, destruction and creation, procrastination and head-first action that I can don an identity and rip it from my skin, in a repeated process where I unbecome who I think I am.

As the Desiderata reminds us:

"You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should."

Again, who am I? Uninterrupted?

I still don’t know. But in this unfolding, I am both the participant and the observer, the creator and the created. I am finding myself in the work, in the connections, in the quiet moments of reflection, in the bustling energy of ideas and the wanton pursuit of the possible.

I am a seeker, a creator, a connector of dots. I am a work in progress, always evolving, always becoming in order to strip it away and to unbecome. Again. And again.

How dare I NOT pursue the impossible in order to uncover the possible? How dare I NOT pursue success and embrace failure? How dare I NOT strip it all off and put it all back together? How dare I bestill myself to inertia, awaiting passive salvation?

It’s in this process of chaos and calm where I’m afforded the momentary glimpse into the eyes of Creation, where I see myself reflecting back into my soul. It’s where Creation and the Void beckon me. Again.

It’s in this journey of (un)becoming, I invite you to join me—to question, to explore, to create, and to find your signature in the vast possibility of life.

A Niche of One + One

In building, breaking apart and rebuilding my world, I recognise that I may not appeal to the masses. But that's okay. I'm not seeking a million followers; I'm seeking a genuine connection with you. You who resonates with my journey, my questions, my explorations.

In seeking you I’m also seeking me. Me and my soul stripped bare.

I want to meet you and your naked soul. I want to know you. I want you to thrive, I want you to push beyond the impossible. But I want to know what happened when Creation and The Void whispered “Come to the cliff.” I want to know when you fell and when you flew. I want to meet the hidden parts of you that feel risky and risqué. I want to know what it was like when the Void whispered in your ear and you turned around to kiss it.

I want to know how you’ve stripped back the layers as you looked into the eyes of Creation and made Creation weep with envy.

With you, I want to embrace the noise and the silence, the successes and the failures, the certainties and the doubts, the known and the unknown, the seen and the unseen.

For in this embrace, we find ourselves to lose ourselves again.

We find ourselves leaping from that cliff, floating back into our shared humanity.