A letter penned from Van Gogh to his brother, Theo in 1884 seemed like a mundane piece of everyday correspondence but eventually birthed the interpretation and re-imagining of his words into the following: “If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is grass in the beginning.”
It was my second year studying in university when I started to feel disenchanted with the fast-paced culture of my city that had instilled in me a warped notion of my worth that would go on to take a lifetime to heal from. I thought to myself: “There has to be more to life than this endless grind that tells me I am my best self only at my most productive self.”
What about the liberating feeling of the wind on my skin, the smell of petrichor filling the air, right before torrential rain? What about the warmth and the heart of the home that we nurture, and the good we do for the ones we love? What of the little things often overlooked, that makes the everyday mundane feel like a gift?
It is difficult to root your worth in simply being in a society that is obsessed with doing. So during one particularly jaded month in my university life, I decided to veer off-course and embark on a journey of creativity, meaning, experience, and emotion to figure out a way of living that resonates better with the things that truly matter to me, even if the road ahead filled me with trepidation.
