For all intents and purposes we are predatory animals. Our mind and physiology were designed around it, our eyes are adapt to following a moving target, we intuitively understand average size things moving at average speeds, we have capabilities for the stamina a chase requires, we fell most alive when we are in pursuit of a goal. But, unlike other predatory animals, we’re not made only to chase only dinner through the savanna. We’re made to chase a whole array of things, most of them mental and emotional. The brain was devised to hit the target, we’re obsessed by it, most of our economy, politics and games are in one way or another cantered around hitting a target and we’ll spend a ridiculous amount of time in our lives watching other people hitting the bullseye, as something in it is so infinitely satisfying. This is why people say “We won!” when the sports team or an athlete they support does some random task like putting a ball into or through something. There is a comradery in the chase, it bonds us and drives us.

And the peddlers of all sorts of things know this. The marketing knows it and uses our innate desire to chase against us. You are no use to the market unless you feel you’re lacking something. If you don’t know what it is they’ll make sure they tell you. When we can’t hit the target it’s a personal catastrophe ending in depression, frustration, and the abys of “not good enough” tied to an invisible chain of forever falling short. Some things we’ve been taught to desire. We learn to desire by watching others, the punishments and rewards the culture dollops around for certain desires and status granted for achieving. We’re not born with most of the desires we find worthy of perusing now. It gets even worse if we’ve been taught to desire things that are just unreal – the flawless lives from photos which themselves do not look like this the second the artificial lighting and poses fall apart and the makeup is washed off, perfection which is unattainable and unsustainable by its very nature, problem free lives of only hedonic pursuits in which we never see the work behind the still frame, forever growing bases of fans and followers, the ideal body which cannot stay this way ravaged by time, wrinkle free faces with pouted lips in perfect settings which crumble the moment the camera is off… When the object of a chase is utterly unattainable, change the picture not the self. This society needs new pictures.

Chasing something is inevitable because this is what we were made to do. You’ll chase something, consciously or not, but make sure you’re not chasing an apparition, a spectre never intended to be viable in reality. Constantly missing the target that cannot ever be hit will result in depletion. So don’t go chasing ghosts and wild geese. Strive to be better than you were in whatever area you feel you find most meaning in. Follow your interest and don’t concern yourself too much with perfection. It does not exist, it cannot exist except an elusive feeling, a fleeting moment or a concept which is to be used as inspiration, not a permanent residence or something that constantly makes you feel less than you are. Stop fighting the real, learn to accept and love the imperfection, the quirks, cracks, abundance of choice, the plasticity that allows you to grow, change, adapt and be whoever the hell you want to be. The world will always have opinions on you and your choices and everything else within its scope, and this opinion is as steady as a wind cock perched upon a merry go round. It has nothing to do with you so there is no need to chase its validation and the fashionable turns towards its complete opposites at a drop of a hat. This is what fashions and fads are, the era that follow is always the opposite of the previous one. You’re going to be chasing something inevitably. Make sure the object of the chase is worthy instead of questioning your own worth. The quality and hitability of the bullseye you choose to aim at determines the amount of pleasure you get from the chase itself. Not hitting it is ok, you can always try again.