You are the Alchemist

Combine

How can you combine life experience, expectations, information? Isn’t this what creation is? The combination, finding the recipe in cultivating you. Balance of ingredients you desire to be and who you actually are to meld together to who you become.

Alchemy is an ancient practice dating back to a time of myths and legends. A student of alchemy, referred to as an alchemist, would attempt to purify, mature and perfect certain materials. It is seemingly the magical process of transformation, creation, or combination.

Alchemy
History of Alchemy from Ancient Egypt to Modern Times

Similar to how alchemy combines, synthesis is a combination of different sources to unite to create something new. Can we take these two concepts and apply them to ourselves?

Synthesize

As humans, when we are born, we exist, learn, dream, and live. Existing and being is our purest form, that begins our journey in life. As time passes, we learn from others and our environment to form ideas, aspirations, and dreams of how we want to live our lives. This is a form of combining, synthesizing who we are and what we become. In a sense, we are the alchemist of our lives. There is a term I came across that began this journey of thought called the synthesized information.

What is synthesize information? The process of taking multiple sources and putting them together into one cohesive idea while bringing in a new design or theory.

If you google synthesize information, you are flooded with educational links in how to integrate written information. This got me thinking about how we take all our human senses and incorporate information in life. It also allowed me to evaluate the concept of alchemists to creating.

3 broad strokes of life are universal to everyone: Expectation, Realization, and Acceptance. The more I thought about these categories, the more I felt a large percentage of people are obsessed with their expectations and are stuck in the realization of their own life. How can we create that perfect blend of life then?

Expectation

The expectation of you want to be, and envisioning the future you in that fantasy future is the purity of who you want to be. We want to manifest that unreal foresight into this tangible world. Creating a definition of ourselves places a line in the sand of life, yelling that this is who we will become. By creating that scale of what we expect out of our outcomes in life, we try so hard to become that person. Dream big, and do not start filtering your dreams with negative thoughts or presumptions. Write out your goals, make them real.

Realization

The realization is when life kicks our dreams down a notch. Life is hard. While we take ten steps towards our goals, we are knocked back 5 or 20 levels. Your frame of mind can either step up to the challenge, recalibrate, or fall into despair and settle for less. I feel many of us are in this loop of realization and cannot see past it. Have an honest internal conversation with yourself. Know your limitations, setbacks, and discover ways to expect them and overcome them. You cannot allow life’s unexpected steps to become the editor of your dreams. Amend what you cannot control as factors towards your expectations.

Acceptance

Accepting what we expect of ourselves compared to the realization of how things really are, is the recipe and synthesis of enlightenment. When we become our own alchemist of life, we find the perfect measurements to find content, gratitude, and happiness. There is no point in realizing your expectations of yourself without acceptance of the result. Perfectionists fall victim to not having the exact results they desire. Be gracious in the journey of fulfilling your aspirations.

Integration of your senses and experiences creates your lens. Keeping your inputs receptive to everything allows a more extensive scope for your own output. Good artists emulates the style of another,
great artists integrate elements of another with their own.