I’ve been thinking a great deal about disappointment, particularly the disappointment we experience in ourselves. There are circumstances in life that leave us questioning other people’s conduct, but I think there’s something more difficult about recognizing our own participation in experiences we might have understood differently, had we been willing to examine ourselves a little sooner.
I’m not suggesting that we are responsible for what other people do to us. We aren’t. But we are responsible for considering our own decisions, our reasons for making them, and what we choose to do with the knowledge we’ve acquired. I’ve reached an age where disappointment in other people seems less useful to me than it once did. Human beings are complicated, and we’re all living through circumstances that another person may never fully understand. I cannot reasonably expect somebody to possess the same knowledge, interests, or capacity for reflection that I have, any more than I can claim to possess theirs.
What I can do is examine myself.
There is something uncomfortable about recognizing that we have occasionally acted against our own understanding, or continued pursuing things long after we suspected they weren’t particularly good for us. It’s easy enough to identify another person’s shortcomings. Looking carefully at our own requires a willingness to sit with things we may not especially like.
I have been disappointed in myself for taking so long to recognize certain things. Not because I believe I should have known everything, but because there were times when I knew enough to question what I was doing and chose to continue anyway.
And yet, I’m not convinced that every decision we eventually regret was necessarily a mistake.
When we’re young, we sometimes seek experiences precisely because we don’t understand them. We want to know what something feels like, what another person might teach us, or what we may discover about ourselves by entering circumstances we haven’t encountered before. Sometimes we take those risks knowing perfectly well that the outcome may be unpleasant.
I think taking risks is essential to understanding the world beyond what we’re already familiar with. Traveling to unfamiliar places, experiencing other cultures firsthand, and stepping outside the circumstances in which we feel most comfortable can teach us things that observation alone cannot; there is a difference between knowing that other ways of living exist and having experienced them for ourselves.
I think the most substantial learning often comes from participating directly in life. We can study something for years and still discover that the experience itself contains difficulties and distinctions we hadn’t anticipated. When direct experience isn’t possible, we have the accumulated knowledge of other people. Books allow us to enter circumstances beyond our own lives, to consider what somebody else has observed, endured, investigated, or understood.
I’ve always found something remarkable about that. A person can spend a lifetime acquiring knowledge, and another human being, perhaps living centuries later, can encounter some portion of it through the written word.
But experience alone doesn’t guarantee understanding. We have to be willing to consider what it means, and that requires something more than simply accumulating memories. We can move through an extraordinary number of experiences without examining how they’ve affected our understanding of ourselves or the world around us.
We live in a world that offers an extraordinary number of ways to avoid being alone with our thoughts. Technology, entertainment, the internet, and the endless availability of other people’s lives can occupy nearly every moment of our attention. These things aren’t inherently bad; they can educate us, connect us, and make life considerably more interesting. But they can also become habits that leave very little room for reflection.
I sometimes wonder how much of what we call living is simply an effort to remain occupied. We have access to more information than any generation before us, yet the availability of knowledge doesn’t necessarily mean we’re becoming more thoughtful. Information can be acquired almost instantly, but understanding requires us to consider what we’ve encountered, question its meaning, and recognize how it relates to what we already believe.
There are people who may be frightened of what they would discover if they slowed down. Others are exhausted, distracted, or have never learned to examine themselves with much patience. I don’t think there’s one explanation for why people behave as they do, and I don’t believe I have the authority to judge another person’s entire existence because I disagree with their conduct. That doesn’t mean overlooking cruelty or excusing behavior that harms other people. We can recognize wrongdoing and hold people accountable without pretending to understand everything about the person responsible for it.
I learned something about cruelty very early.
I was bullied terribly as a little girl, beginning in preschool and continuing through much of my childhood. Changing schools didn’t necessarily change the behavior I encountered, and I remember being astonished that people could treat one another in such ways. As I grew older, I began recognizing similar conduct in adults, and I found myself wondering what could possibly be done about something so deeply embedded in human behavior.
I don’t believe cruelty is the whole of human nature. There is too much evidence of tenderness, generosity, intelligence, and cooperation for me to accept that. But I do believe we possess capacities that can develop in very different directions, depending upon what we experience and what we’re willing to examine within ourselves.
We cannot reasonably expect humanity to become more thoughtful while remaining unwilling to consider our own behavior. Nor can we assume that everyone will arrive at the same understanding at the same time.
Some people seem to acquire certain kinds of knowledge remarkably early. Others spend decades reaching conclusions that might appear obvious to somebody else. One person may possess an ability another hasn’t developed, and that ability may be shared, learned, or accumulated independently through curiosity and experience. We all come to our fruit in our own time.
Perhaps I’m something of a late bloomer. There are things I understand now that I wish I’d understood twenty years ago, although I also recognize that the person I was twenty years ago had experiences she hadn’t yet lived through and questions she hadn’t learned to ask. Growing older gives us opportunities to accumulate experience, but whether we make anything of that experience is another matter.
It requires curiosity, and I think it also requires courage.
Questioning beliefs we’ve carried for years can be difficult, particularly when those beliefs have helped us feel accepted or secure. Recognizing that we may have been wrong about something important can threaten our understanding of ourselves, and developing our individuality sometimes means accepting that other people won’t approve of what we’re becoming.
I’ve never understood individualism as a rejection of humanity. To me, it’s the recognition that we possess different abilities, interests, and ways of contributing to a world we share. I don’t think everyone is meant to pursue the same purpose, or that one person’s contribution must resemble another’s to be meaningful.
Some people protest injustice. Others devote their lives to scientific research, medicine, teaching, or caring for those who cannot care for themselves. There are writers, painters, philosophers, photographers, and orators whose work may cause somebody to reconsider an idea they had previously accepted without question. There are people whose contributions will never receive public recognition, although their influence may be considerable.
Our differences also make it possible to learn from one another. Knowledge accumulated by one person may become the foundation of another person’s understanding, and an ability we haven’t developed ourselves may be something we encounter through somebody else’s work. Individuality doesn’t separate us from humanity’s accumulated knowledge; it allows us to contribute to it in ways that might otherwise never exist.
I find it difficult to imagine humanity progressing without that exchange. The knowledge available to us is the result of countless individual efforts, but what we do with it depends upon the choices we make, both independently and collectively. Our capacity to discover something doesn’t necessarily establish that we understand its consequences, or that we’re prepared to use it responsibly.
And I think progress should involve more than the accumulation of technological achievements. I’m fascinated by the possibility of traveling beyond this planet, and I understand the curiosity that makes us want to explore space. But I also wonder why we don’t devote an equal measure of our imagination and determination to improving the world we’re already living on.
We have extraordinary capacities for discovery, yet there are so many things about our treatment of the planet and one another that remain troublingly primitive. The distinction troubles me because it suggests that intellectual and technological development can advance considerably without an equivalent development in our willingness to examine the consequences of our behavior. Some people are suited to public action; others accomplish more through quiet, sustained work. I think we have a responsibility to consider what our particular abilities might contribute to a humanity whose future depends, at least in part, upon what we choose to do with them.
For me, that contribution has always been connected to making things.
I remember that the happiest moments of my childhood were spent drawing, writing, reading, and learning. I felt safe during those hours, and there was a joy in the experience that I still find difficult to explain. I wasn’t concerned with recognition or approval. I was simply involved in something that brought me an extraordinary sense of peace.
I didn’t have the language to consider that experience philosophically at the time, but I recognize now that being physically alone and experiencing inner stillness are not necessarily the same thing.
As an artist, that difference matters.
I can spend hours alone and still be occupied by thoughts that prevent me from concentrating. I can sit in front of a drawing or a page and find that my mind is somewhere else entirely.
And I haven’t always been at peace with myself.
I don’t think it’s necessary to explain every circumstance that has contributed to that. What interests me is the relationship between disappointment, self-examination, and the ability to become sufficiently settled within ourselves to do the work that matters to us.
There have been times when I’ve spent too much energy trying to understand other people’s behavior, or trying to resolve circumstances that weren’t entirely mine to resolve. I’ve sometimes confused my curiosity about people with a need to remain involved in their lives, even when those exchanges offered very little in return.
Certain desires have left me. I no longer feel particularly interested in maintaining friendships or participating in frequent conversations. Much of what passes between people seems to consist of talking about themselves, often without much curiosity about the person listening. I don’t find those exchanges especially rewarding, and I don’t feel a loss when they end.
That doesn’t mean I believe companionship is unimportant. It means I’ve come to recognize that it isn’t something I need in the same way other people might. My time has become more precious to me, and I would rather spend much of it working.
I don’t think affection for humanity requires us to be constantly involved in social life. I can care about another person’s comfort, safety, and ability to sustain a decent existence without needing to participate personally in everything that concerns them. In fact, I sometimes feel more connected to humanity when I’m drawing or writing than I do when I’m surrounded by people.
There’s something about making things that allows me to move beyond the immediate circumstances of my own life. I can consider an idea, give form to an observation, or communicate something I haven’t been able to explain in conversation. I can work quietly for hours and feel that I’m participating in something larger than myself.
That experience is also connected to what I understand as spirituality.
I don’t believe in God, or in a separate being who presides over our lives and determines what we are meant to become. My understanding of spirituality has more to do with the experience of belonging to an existence that extends beyond my individual consciousness. I believe there is an energy inherent in that existence, something we participate in rather than something that governs us from outside it.
When I’m deeply involved in my work, I sometimes experience that connection with unusual clarity. I feel as though something greater than myself is working alongside me, although I don’t understand it as an external intelligence directing what I do. The experience is real to me, but I recognize the distinction between being certain of what I’ve felt and claiming to know precisely what accounts for it.
I don’t know whether that sense of connection arises entirely from consciousness itself or whether it reflects something about existence that we haven’t yet learned to understand. I’m not particularly troubled by the absence of an explanation. There are things we can experience without possessing the knowledge necessary to define them.
I believe human beings are capable of developing a greater consciousness through love, curiosity, and the willingness to reflect upon themselves. I don’t think enlightenment has to be understood as something bestowed upon us by an authority outside our own existence. Perhaps it’s something we gradually develop through our capacity to examine what we know, acknowledge what we don’t, and reconsider the ways we participate in the world.
I also think stillness means different things to different people. Someone may find it through meditation, contemplation, or an activity that requires complete attention. For me, it’s the ability to sit alone and write or draw, without needing approval and without being continually interrupted by unresolved questions about myself or other people. It doesn’t mean forgetting what has happened or pretending that certain experiences haven’t affected me; it means being able to consider those experiences, including my own decisions, without allowing them to occupy the whole of my attention.
I don’t believe I’ve reached some permanent state of peace. I don’t even know that such a state is possible. There are always new circumstances to consider, new things to learn, and aspects of ourselves that may become apparent only after we’ve lived long enough to recognize them.
Disappointment has played a considerable part in my understanding of that uncertainty. I don’t regard it as something noble or particularly desirable. There are experiences I would rather not have had, and decisions I wish I’d made differently. I cannot turn them into something pleasant simply because I’ve managed to think about them more carefully.
What I can acknowledge is the distance between what we believe and how we actually live.
We may believe ourselves to be thoughtful while repeatedly acting without much consideration. We may value independence while allowing other people’s opinions to determine our choices. We may speak about kindness and responsibility while neglecting the consequences of our own conduct.
I don’t exclude myself from any of those possibilities. Possessing the capacity to understand something intellectually doesn’t guarantee that we’ve learned to practice it, and I think recognizing that distinction is among the more difficult aspects of examining ourselves.
For me, the work of creating is inseparable from that examination. Writing requires me to consider what I mean, and drawing requires a kind of sustained attention that leaves very little room for distraction. Both ask something of me that I cannot always give when my mind is occupied elsewhere.
There is something remarkable about the human ability to take an observation, a feeling, or an understanding that exists privately within the mind and give it a form another person can encounter.
A poem may communicate something that would require pages of explanation in an essay. A drawing can hold an experience that doesn’t lend itself easily to language. A photograph may preserve something that another person would otherwise never have noticed. What we make can become part of somebody else’s understanding, sometimes long after we’ve finished considering it ourselves.
I think there’s an important distinction between making something that another person can encounter and making something that requires another person’s agreement. An artist doesn’t necessarily transmit a conclusion. Sometimes the work presents a question, an experience, or a possibility that another person must interpret independently. Its value isn’t confined to whether that interpretation resembles the artist’s intention, or whether anyone recognizes the work at all.
There’s something peaceful about the possibility of sharing an understanding without demanding agreement. We begin to discover what differences we can tolerate, where compromise is possible, and how people with different beliefs might coexist without needing to defeat one another. Harmony doesn’t require identical minds. It requires some willingness to recognize that another person’s existence and understanding need not threaten our own.
I think the inability to make that distinction can become dangerous. Disagreement itself isn’t violence, but when people begin treating every difference as something that must be overcome or eliminated, the possibility of coexistence becomes increasingly fragile. That is one reason accountability matters so much to me. When disappointment causes us to examine our own conduct rather than simply assign blame, we may recognize the point at which our frustration, certainty, or resentment begins to place somebody else in harm’s way.
Of course, compromise has its limits. I don’t believe peaceful coexistence requires us to tolerate cruelty or surrender our responsibility to protect people from harm. There is a difference between allowing another person to think differently and accepting conduct that threatens somebody else’s safety. Learning to distinguish between those circumstances is part of the intellectual and ethical work of living among other human beings.
What interests me is that we possess the ability to examine our own consciousness, yet that ability doesn’t necessarily determine how we behave. We can recognize something as reasonable, ethical, or beneficial and still act against that understanding. My disappointment has made me question not only what I’ve done, but how a person comes to believe something, act upon it, and sometimes behave in contradiction to it.
I think part of that contradiction lies in our relationship with effort and expectation. We may understand intellectually that something is worth pursuing, but when the consequences of changing our behavior aren’t immediately visible, it’s easy to become discouraged. We want some indication that our effort will amount to something, and when that indication doesn’t arrive, we may abandon the very things we know would be beneficial.
I don’t think this is simply a failure of intelligence. Understanding something and being willing to endure the uncertainty involved in practicing it are different capacities. There are times when we may know what would be better for us, or for somebody else, but cannot imagine what the result of making that change will feel like. The absence of an immediate reward can make an old, familiar disappointment seem more tolerable than the uncertainty of doing something differently.
And I think this is where stillness becomes more than the absence of noise or interruption.
There is a kind of peace in being able to live with what we know about ourselves without continually struggling against it. Not the satisfaction of having made every correct decision, or the certainty that we won’t disappoint ourselves again, but the ability to acknowledge what has happened and consider what remains possible without being consumed by the distance between the two.
I don’t believe that peace can be demanded from ourselves, or that it necessarily arrives as a reward for having behaved correctly. It may take considerable time to recognize that we can accept responsibility without spending the rest of our lives punishing ourselves for what we’ve failed to understand.
Perhaps the difficulty is that we so often expect the value of our efforts to become visible somewhere outside us. We look for a result, a change in circumstance, or some confirmation that our understanding has made a difference. Yet there may be a quieter consequence of learning to live more consistently with what we believe: a mind no longer occupied by the need to defend what it knows to be contradictory.
That possibility interests me because it doesn’t require disappointment to become something pleasant or meaningful simply because we’ve survived it. Nor does it suggest that understanding will prevent us from making further mistakes.
It asks something more difficult of our intellect: whether we can recognize a contradiction within ourselves, accept the responsibility that recognition creates, and continue acting upon our understanding even when we cannot see what the outcome will be.
I think the peace we’re looking for may have less to do with reaching a final understanding than with no longer having to turn away from the understanding we already possess.
1102|2026
Marni Fraser
XI:VII AM
