The Realm of Becoming

An artist has got to be careful never really to arrive at a place where he thinks he’s at somewhere. You always have to realize that you’re constantly in a state of becoming. As long as you can stay in that realm, you’ll sort of be alright.

Bob Dylan

This poem was inspired by the above quote by Bob Dylan.


All security is false security

All that can be known is the unknown


Attempts to grasp onto the static, the stable, are short-lived


Echoing the words of Heraclitus, “you cannot step in the same river twice”

One’s life is always in a constant state of change, of flux


Terrified of this uncertainty, many of us desperately try to restrict our freedom

We turn to the world of ‘isms’ and ideologies

Narrowing our identity down to a role

We put on a mask and set fixed boundaries


Longing for this illusive hope of security, we cling to the past

Hold onto the ordinary


But the artist, the great innovators and heroes of the past, live in the realm of becoming

Nothing is set in stone

They embrace uncertainty, and leave the world of the known for the unknown 


Through this risk, they transcend their past selves, and strive towards a new path

For them, life is not a predefined set of rules

Rather it’s a blank canvas awaiting to be explored with one’s vivid imagination


Living on the edge of existence, these architects of the world pave the way forward  

They leave an open invitation awaiting all of us

A portal from the finite and into the infinite

A blank page


Like a river our existence is always in a state of change
Photo by Marta Wave on Pexels.com

Featured Image Source

8 thoughts on “The Realm of Becoming

  1. Nice post, thank you! It reminds me of Sartre’s (and more broadly – existentialist) idea that humans are condemned to be free. Condemned.

    Like

    1. Thank you for reading. Yes, that was very much on my mind while writing this. Freedom is a double edged sword in a sense , but the struggles are necessary if one hopes to live an authentic life

      Like

Leave a Reply to Pina Abballe Cancel reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s