About
As if I could tell you anything significant about myself in a paragraph without resorting to selling points and stereotypes. All my successes I’d embellish. Any attempts at modesty would be tactical.
So instead of listing credentials and accolades or trying to define myself by some economic function, I'll share with you a quote:
"Man can embody truth, but he cannot know it."
Why do I share this quote? Because it's what I'd like to be about. It represents what I'd like my family and friends to say of me when I’m dead, should they say anything at all.
I can imagine a man—indeed, I've known one or two—who lives the truth, who causes people to say in light of him, "That is how to live."
Yet that same man, when asked what ideas or beliefs inform his way of living, is genuinely perplexed. He can offer definitions, but never without disclaimers. He displays the strongest convictions, but always is full of doubt. He simultaneously loves and hates the world. Always he is fighting, and yet he has surrendered.
Maybe you've known such a person. I've known, maybe, a few. They possess the kind of qualities I'd like to embody. They have marked a way, and that's what, I suppose, I'd like to be about. What I'm actually about, however, is another matter.
Here’s to traversing the terrain between.
—Ryan
Self-Portrait 2018