This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

Dear Sara,

Do you remember when I started identifying with the Will Smith movie I am Legend?
2020
The man alone in a deserted city, devoid of human connection with merely his dog to keep him company.
The same tv show playing over and over.
And zombies to fear on daily expeditions across the overgrown city.

For years, I woke up with the distinct feeling of isolation.
Which turned into waking up sick.
Which eventually led to the point I got sick the moment I lay down.

And although medicine have taken care of my physical symptoms, and the damage these years did to important relationships (the ones that stuck but eroded none the less) is slowly being repaired;
And although I have no doubt the final part of my career will have the same carefree social connection as my entire life was blessed with until 2018-ish (years before the pandemic) when it all started falling apart;
Something has changed.
Something which will never return.
The isolation will stay with me forever, and the only way I will ever be able to belong is through my work.

Because I am no longer connected to others.
It is only through my actions, that I can make the difference now.
And maybe that is what maturity is, and it has opened up new avenues of thinking. It is strange to realize how much of the drama and the despair that I once thought was part of life, I realize now is not mine.
It only seemed mine, because I was connected.

I didn’t really connect the dots until today, when I came across an analysis of Bladerunner 2049, a movie that I have started to feel such a kinship with.
Yet I credited it to Ryan Gosling, or to the Rutger Hauer connection to the 1982 Bladerunner movie.
The magic of art and male beauty. 
Yet didn’t expect my fascination with Bladerunner 2049 to be so personal.

But of course…..

Bladerunner 2049 is about a replicant “named” K who follows his orders to eliminate older model replicants, who still have the ability to disobey.
K hates his job, yet executes without question because his whole life he has been told his feelings do not matter.

This is the point where I had written multiple paragraphs (which I lost when  I lost internet connection), about how we all recognize this as the way we live our lives too.
Execute regardless of how we feel.
Amplified, during the pandemic.
At least in The Netherlands, the discussion about what was “good” and what was “bad” and who were the good people and who could be ignored and marginalized, peaked during these years.
And to me it was not so much the content of the discussion, on either side, as much as it was the total absence of a discussion about the characteristics of the conversation itself, that upset me the most.

And although I still hope to one day get a full insight in what it was exactly that changed me forever during those years, for now I m keeping it at feeling isolated in my need to have a meta conversation about it.

Seeing my position mirrored in Bladerunner 2049, is a first and welcome step.

In the movie a replicant named K, played by Ryan Gosling, hunts other replicants who can still disobey and are therefor terminated.
After every assignment he receives a psychological test with the Nabokov quote above, to ensure he does not start attaching feelings of guilt or remorse to killing is own kind.

On one of his assignments he finds proof of a replicant having had a child, and he has memories that suggest he was that child.
That he is therefor not a replicant, he is not made, but he is born from a special replicant who, much like Mary could conceive Jesus, could get pregnant when law said that should not be possible.

The moment K starts questioning his artificial background is the moment he starts questioning his work and gets a growing sense of meaning and purpose.
Yet despite his possibly divine-like origins, the movie makes it clear that is not what makes him human.
What makes him human are his actions.

Just like the thoughtless, routine-like way in which he did his work (assassinating other replicants) at the beginning of the movie, was what made him a machine, or a non-human.
Not his origin.

Two, three months ago, I was on the verge of starting my own version of  a job where I would assassinate other replicants. 
Like K, I had lost all humanness and had made my peace understanding that to society I was only of use if I did my capitalist duty.

But I had a change of heart.
Just like K, something happened that made me choose to do the right thing.

And not because anyone will notice. Like K, I know neither the resistance, nor capitalism, nor the law, will be able to do what I consider the right thing.
The right thing is always personal. It’s small, insignificant, and impossible to scale up to an organization, religion or philosophy.
Doing the right thing is too subjective to be of any use on a bigger scale.

Because the right thing, is the thing that is done with love, and for love.
And once you see, it becomes the only option.
Yet I am certain that if I were still connected to other people I would not be able to act accordingly.
Because it’s also the most difficult choice.

Despite its fluffy connotation, choosing to act from love is an extremely hard path.

At one point, K asks Anna, who is a creator of memories much like an artist paints a painting, he asks her how you know if a memory is real or not.
At which Anna answers:

“Anything real, should be a mess.”

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living