The Happiness Of Pursuit.

The Beauty Of Private Victory.

Illustation by Karolis Strautniekas on Behance.

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.