Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Post No. 085: For Self-Reflection, Part 1 — Map Quest


(Image from Dorset Cereals)

Map Quest
(Or, "The Real Treasure Hunt")

The treasure
lies within
the hunt!

In other words:

It is the hunt
that is the
treasure!

-Paul Whiting
(a.k.a., A Creative Writer)
"I maybe say too much about how life really is!"

My Writing Notes:

The reason that I wrote this poem can be summed up with the following statement: I wrote this poem to explain the concept that "the treasure" (the reward for doing work) is a characteristic of, or an integral part of, or a natural state of "the hunt" (the process of doing work).

In other words, it is the process of doing work that matters. For, it is the process of doing work that is the "treasure"—and not necessarily the "reward" of doing work that is the treasure—because, sometimes, "there is no treasure found from the hunt."

Thus, it is the hunt that is the treasure!

Put another way, it is the process of doing work that is the reward of doing work—because doing work is intrinsically rewarding and you gain insights about how best to process doing that kind of work from doing it—since there are times when there is no "reward" for doing work.

Now in this metaphor, or direct comparison, that I am making, I am referring specifically to the types of work where there is an actual possibility that "the treasure lies within the hunt" since, for some types of work, it is required for there to be "a literal reward" in order for that work to have any value at all!

Therefore, this is simply a metaphorical comparison that I am making with specific regard to the types of work for which this metaphor of "the treasure lies within the hunt" actually applies.

Thus, I am extolling the virtues of seeing the process of doing work as being valuable in lieu of, or in place of, the reward of doing work, because there are times in life when you do work—such as trail and error effort, or research and development, or the scientific method, for example—where there are no "rewards," necessarily, but there is still value in doing that work due to experience gained, as well as due to the work that you produced which you may not be able to utilize at the time, but that you can utilize at another time...

...A simple example of this is in motion picture production (movie production), where motion picture studios (movie studios) will film sequences for motion pictures (movies) that "end up on the cutting room floor," as the saying goes; but the studios may recycle those film sequences that were cut, later on, in order to utilize those film sequences in other motion pictures (movies).

Just so you know, I revised this poem, as I often do with my writing! And I changed how this poem was written when I was editing it on my "Paul Whiting — A Creative Writer" and "Small All White in the Forest" blogs. So, I wanted to show you how this poem used to be written, before I revised it as above.

And it used to be written like this:

Map Quest!
(Or, "The Real Treasure Hunt")

The treasure
lies within
the hunt!

Thus, I revised this poem to be written as it is above.

And this poem was also published on my "Small All White in the Forest" blog (please see the hyperlink below for the blog), since I feel that the message in this poem applies to the message that I am trying to convey through "Small All White in the Forest."

This poem was written in Portland, Oregon.

-Paulee

https://smallallwhiteintheforest.blogspot.com

This "Paul Whiting — A Creative Writer" Post No. 085 was edited on March 15th, 2024.

"Poetry is using the fewest words possible in order to describe all that is possible to describe." –Paul Whiting [June 1st, 2022]