You came all this way to find what I’ve always known.
There’s something disorienting about realising that truth.
I have spent so much of my lives seeking, travelling to the edges of the Earth, hoping some distant place might give me what I couldn’t find back home.
And then, there she was.
A fur seal. Unbothered. Unimpressed.
She didn’t care that I had crossed oceans.
She wasn’t interested in the fact I had endured countless flights, sea sickness, and backpacking down South America to journey there..
Seal just knew.
We’re the ones who’ve made a mess of simply being alive.
We monetized living for profits, profits paid for the performance of living... dressed it up in numbers and deadlines, filters and facades.
We’ve turned our attention outward.
Always documenting. Rarely inhabiting.
Measuring life in output.
Checking if the moment is shareable before we’ve even felt it.
But that seal knew.
The irony is this:
You might have to go somewhere completely unknown to remember what’s been true all along.
That who you are, in this exact moment, stripped of titles and timelines, is enough.
That the next version of you isn’t better than others.
Just better than who you were.
Photographed on South Georgia Island, January 2020