The following is something I wrote about 4 years ago and shared on my Instagram story to my followers, most of whom are people I know in real life. I believe I wrote this after finishing Marguerite Porete's The Mirror of Simple Souls and reading some of Hadewijch: The Complete Works, hence my inclusion of Hadewijch's Poems in Stanza 38.

I found myself thinking back on this today after a conversation with a coworker about working in academia as a non-academic. Every day, I feel as though I become less intelligent, whereas those around me become more intelligent, and the gap between us widens. Of course, intelligence is not so simple as my insecurity would make it seem. When this kind of petty insecurity surfaces within me, I find solace thinking back on this small piece of writing.

You should read this while listening to Borinda's Lament by Dolly Mixture if you want to experience this as I intended.

I give myself time to contemplate and look within myself. Time and time again, no matter how hard I try, I find nothing. At first, I thought it was me not thinking hard enough, always distracted by the affairs of the everyday. Then I thought I was scared that what I'd find would be useless or meaningless.

It's not that I don't think hard enough, or am too distracted; rather, I am looking too hard. I try to find meaning where there is none, and in doing so suppress all possibility. To want everything to fit into a mold of meaning is to put a cap on the possibility of everything. There is no meaning in the next trinket, nor in the path forward, nor in you.

There is nothing better than that, than a meaninglessness that lets you enjoy, rest, and be without justification. A meaninglessness from which can spring the potential of life. A meaninglessness by which you are reduced to nothing, annihilated, forced to look beyond the pettiness of the next trinket, of pleasure, of capital, and instead seek to seek.

To be reduced to nothingness in Love
Is the most desirable thing I know
Among all the works I have experience of,
Although I know it is beyond my reach.
And if anyone then dares to fight Love with longing,
Wholly without heart and without mind,
And Love counters this longing with her longing:
That is the force by which we conquer Love.

Thenceforward, whether with joy or pain,
If anyone can dare to fight Love with ardor,
Love cannot resist the violence of the assault:
But he shall abide firm in the storm, conformed to Love.

– from Hadewijch: The Complete Works, Poems in Stanza 38