Despite the victory we strive for in public, the validation we long for from our peers, loved ones, and adversaries, there remains another conquest which slips through our fingers and obscures itself in the shadows. This form of triumph is shared only with the inner spirit—a witness of one—and displays no physical souvenir for proof.
I am talking, about private victories.
What is true in your heart of hearts lives beyond the understanding of the collective unconscious. To rejoice inwardly for the sweetness of life, is a nectar which drips fulfilment in a way no sensual pleasure can satiate.
To conquer a private victory means to stand up straight with your shoulders back, to take deep and full inhalations as someone who’s championed the inner war that rages against us all at times. It means achieving a success which no accolade or trophy can confirm, which no alive being can surmise to be true.
Yet if it is true in your heart, if you have conquered a private victory, then true it is.
The older I get, the more I value private victory as a metric for personal improvement over the inherently public thirst for admiration and accolade. Over the course of my career as a filmmaker, there have been many lofty goals which have appeared between the lines of my notebook, peaks of a mountain that at one time, seemed unscalable to me. I would crane my neck and peer up at the altitudinal target and work to imagine myself there already, then, I would take the next step. Many such goals have been achieved in this respect, and for this, I am grateful for my ability to work diligently towards the goals I desire and to be delusional enough to believe they can be true.
Many moons ago, my friend Jay and I sat together in a freezing skatepark. We tried to stay warm between the orange glow from a joint passed back and forth beneath the dark umbrella of a cold winter’s night. Morale was dim yet not extinguished, we spoke of hopes and dreams. Work in our industry had frozen up, bigger jobs seemed as elusive as the summer sun. Yet the darkness around us wasn’t enough to keep us from dreaming, sketching far-fetched figments of imaginations in working with worldwide brands as young filmmakers. Months, heck— years later, we still remember that day as instrumental to our origin story in working within the fashion space. Six months from then, Jay and I stepped on set of the fall-winter 2021 campaign for Louis Vuitton, the blackened cold had ripened into sweetness.
The other day, I achieved another one of my long-desired goals: to work with one of the biggest hiphop artists in the world. For years I strived, dreamt, and pushed onward, all the while believing that one day if I only kept working hard and the intention alive, it would come my way. Then it did. The opportunity appeared before me, and as it approached I became more aware of the journey I’d been on to arrive at the precipice of this moment.
Meeting [name omitted] was, to tell you the truth, quite a let down. I have worked with big talent before, and cannot help but think of the phrase ‘never meet your idols,’ for even though I never idolised this artist, even a supreme liking of someone is enough to be soured by the reality of who they reveal themselves to be. No one quite lives up to your expectations. Yet this time it was markedly worse, the artist was rude, belligerent, hiding affliction behind glassy eyes. I didn’t take it personally, but I couldn’t help but wonder, what is it all for?
There is a compulsion which festers beneath the skin of the ultra-ambitious. One I have been privy to notice from up close, both in myself and others, one which hardly ever sees the value in taking a moment to appreciate, and almost always looks ahead as if to say, ‘What’s next?’
You see, once the shoot was done, another goal ticked off the list, and the only thing left to do was receive the afterglow of validation from telling or showing people about having worked with [name omitted], the win turned hollow and empty.
I had come full circle.
For I remembered the time when on cold nights, breath visible, an inky black sky above me, there flickered a belief in my chest that I would work with this artist, even though I had no proof that I would, even though no one had any reason to believe that I could, and that this feeling alone was the conquering of an invisible mountain discernible to no one but me.
Every win feels the same.
When we achieve a goal we have been in hot pursuit of, the feeling is one of short-lived joy, celebration, and insecure satisfaction. Within a few days ‘the itch’ comes back, the severed sound of ‘what’s next?’ will start to form in our mind and before we know it, we’ve stepped back on the hamster wheel.
This realisation hit me hard. What is it all for? Not just for this goal, but for any goal that we're brave enough to pursue.
The answer lies hidden beneath the mirrored reflection of the external world and requires a simple yet difficult shift in perspective.
Goals are built upon the idea that ‘once we achieve X, we will be ‘_____’ fill in the blank— happy, healed, rich, good-enough, admired, stronger, better.
It’s a predetermined outcome of a novel experience, how could you ever expect to know how you would feel when you get there?
If we seek any kind of longevity in the pursuit of our goals, we must exchange the pursuit of happiness, with the happiness of pursuit.
I see now, that those moments in the dark, when I was working towards achieving my goals, when no one saw me or believed in me, were the real trophy that justified my achievement. Those moments of sheer delusion, dangerous self-belief, were the sparks which, after it’s all done and gone, I remember,— as the conquest for which I searched, as the medal which I desired to adorn my spirit with. The goals themselves turn to dust, nothing but another roadside attraction on the path to inner growth.
It is not what we achieve that makes us worthy, rather, it is the person we become in pursuit of them which fills us with virtue. True victory doesn’t reveal itself at the peak of some elusive mountain, but rather in the quiet, unseen moments of becoming the person we always knew we were meant to be.
— iL.
Photos by the author, taken in Wales during the FW21 Louis Vuitton campaign.
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Your age belies your years, Ilan
It’s always about the journey, well articulated!