Where your heart is, that is where your treasure lies
“Can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be?”
You've always loved Bukowski. You read those words with the raspy but sublime texture you assume is his voice.
Of course, you gravitate towards him. Someone bold enough to tell you to “find something you love and let it kill you.”
But it wasn’t just Bukowski. The first time you read Robert Frost’s "The Road Not Taken," you felt a certain kinship with his dilemma. To be or not to be, that has always been the question.
But aside from this grand desire to be is a grander desire to be in an absolute way. To be renowned, to be on a pedestal of personhood that transcends mundanity. To be in the best way and form and attract the admiration and adulation of others. But to aspire in this way while walking on a road less traveled is a gamble.
And you know this, you know that to pursue your passionate interest and your true calling is a huge bet on yourself. You know that lurking around this desire to be yourself is a nebulous suspicion– a fear, an uncertainty. You have once dared to own thy edge and call it center. You have once tried to give in to your identity as a maverick, an outlier, something outside the norm. But the loneliness of your journey and the weight of your ambition sometimes become uncomfortable. And for you, conformity becomes a price you pay for your sanity.
But your fear wasn't ostracism. Your fear wasn't that you were not brilliant enough. Your fear wasn't that you didn't dream well enough. Your fear, though you’ve tried to dismiss it as a trifling angst, persists with a stubborn presence. You're afraid of a life bereft of achievements or accolades.
You are scared of failure. You're scared that being a maverick doesn't provide the kind of stability you have seen achieved by those who chose the worn-out paths. You're worried that your curiosity may be leading you to lack, obscurity, and deprivation. You’re scared that, like Frost, you may end up telling your story some years later with a deep sigh, and a heart heavy with the regrets of taking the road less traveled. You've read of passionate men starving to hunger. Even Bukowski, the one you gravitate towards.
And so gently, you begin to cast dreams away and shed off intimate curiosities. You begin to move out from the lonely path you walked on and embrace the quotidian rhythm of a normal life.
But there is something more. Something quite enlightening you have been thinking about:
When Jesus said, "Where your treasure lies, that’s where your heart will be," could it also mean that he was saying where your heart is, that is where your treasure lies?
Does it mean that the riches, adulations, peace, satisfaction, happiness, and fulfillment you so desire from life can be found in the path that leads to your heart’s desires?
Where your heart is, that is where your treasure lies.
You are learning to trust the meaning and the implications of this aphorism. The optimism it expresses, the liberty it extends: a candid persuasion to follow your path, be honest with your ambition, and shun the allures of mimetic desire.
And you’re learning that there are several paths, and there is the path. You’ve looked through these many paths and like Frost you're drawn to the one “having perhaps the better claim/ Because it was grassy and wanted wear”
But Frost had also mentioned the opportunity cost of choosing a path randomly with the hopes of coming back to the former path. How way leads on to way and how hopeless it is to think that one can go back and start on another path again.
And the trouble, as Frost mentioned, is that you cannot travel both and be one traveler. So you have to choose.
But the promise remains true: Where your heart lies, that’s where your treasure is.
What else to read?
1. Check out this interesting essay by Nabeel S. Qureshi: Understanding
2. This, too, by Dan Shipper: How Hard Should I Push Myself?
3. Lastly, you may enjoy this YouTube video by David Perell: Best Writing Lessons from 20 Master Writers.