Exploration - Mirrors

I didn’t deliberately set out to experiment with mirrors. If I had, this would have been a very different video. Probably a lot shorter and less fun.

We’ve built a society that loves bottom lines. In so doing, we tend to forget just how much the work we put into those numbers matters, not just to the numbers but to our own well-being. Putting effort into things you enjoy doing is intrinsically pleasurable, usually moreso than “getting what you want”. One of this website’s prime directives is to demonstrate that somehow.

It’s a daunting task, trying to prove that work has this value. It doesn’t show well in short doses. That’s why rich celebrities get to stay on the big screen most of the time, unrestricted by the boredom and frustration and ultimate setbacks we all seem to have to put up with in our own endeavors. The high we get from watching them—getting to “know” what it’s like for efforts to pay off that big—is as much a philosophical drug as heroin is a physical one (and just about as hard to quit). We end up labelling our work failure by mere association.

The only real goal of my mirror adventure documented above was to work with something I hadn’t worked with before. I did that, but that wasn’t the good part. The good part was feeling out a space I’d never been in. That’s an exercise in imagination and creativity, which is pretty much never a waste.

That might sound like I’m just promoting child’s play, but there are two ways in which I would distinguish it. For one, children shouldn’t play with glass. For two, children tend to throw reality away when creating worlds out of their toys. Escaping reality is a cheap thrill. The real world is the most complex and intriguing one you can imagine. Don’t pretend the walls aren’t there; push on them.

Go make some garbage. I’ll wait.