Stay Hungry, Stay Obscene
Many of us are familiar with the Steve Jobs’ adage of “stay hungry, stay foolish”. When discussing with a friend recently, we were talking about doing things that make us happy. And happiness these days is not about money, status or fame. It is more internal and deep. Something like a stirring to return to one’s own – roots or soul as it were. In our case, it was music and song.
Yet for many, this gets bogged down with the mundane and with the rat race to nowhere fast. And in the midst, one catches glimpses of these bits of soul that peep through like tired notes crawling out of an untuned guitar. They pop up in moments of solitude like a spark waiting to ignite. It is there – it just needs to be let out. And so we were saying how we must now seek to do the things that make us who we are – almost like reviving our souls and giving it the food it needs to live and thrive. Not just survive. And this often feels almost forbidden and somewhat obscene – to want something that we really love and to believe that we deserve something that good. Simply because for too long, we have denied ourselves in order to facilitate what others want and what we think we need when in actuality, we have just embraced a veneer to show society and allowed ourselves to become a shadow of who we truly are.
That feeling of obscene guilt needs to be stripped away. And it is not gender specific – speak to any person running the rat race and they will tell you of how much they miss their souls – the bits of music, art, passion, love and joy that they now consciously deny themselves. Because somewhere down the line, somehow, we convinced ourselves that losing ourselves was worth it. Was necessary – like a masochist self flagellating we have beaten the joy, the love and the passion out of ourselves in order to let in the mundane. And it is slowly draining us of who we are.
That needs to stop. Now.
It is in this discussion of reclaiming ourselves that my friend said, ‘stay hungry, stay obscene’. And I fully endorse that for the simple reason that we should never have to apologise for being who we are.
So take those moments where your soul needs to be set free and do what you love – sing that song, dance like no one is watching and don’t let anyone be the dictator of your fate. Don’t ever lose that childlike joy of discovering and thriving, because that is what make us who we are. And we deserve it.
Stay hungry, stay obscene.
