ANNUAL ANNIVERSARY LETTER: DESIGN THE HEART FIRST

The universal laws existing seem to have little regard for the opinions and feelings of miniature ambassadors who have subsisted for a meagre 80 years. Ego-wrecking and humbling. Like gravity, the constant “k” factors we are governed by under the sun are finite and have been flamboyantly autocratic for billions of human years.

Design, the raw artistic impressions of the creator on his canvas, reveals a lot about the soul of the artist. Any creator has reached mastery if he portrays the exactitude of His ideas in a sitting. If this first take gets auctioned for trillions of dollars by strangers who have never held a brush then it just might be truly & remarkably valuable. If the lives of Jean Michel Basquiat and Vincent Van Gogh are anything to go by, geniuses are often given their flowers when they are not anywhere near their canvas.

The ingredients of our cosmic reality are too defined and creatively complex to deny the designs that point to the existence of a Creator. The mystery of His strokes and sighing curves exude joy and astonishment. The chain reaction of His inputs and the imbibed mechanisms to ensure continuity are a thing of beauty, the fascination of His network of design inspires awe and fuels astonishment.

We have not been successful. We have tried with a couple of patterns and “How to…” information to try to understand some standing blocks older than us but we have not been successful. The shame in this is not valid but only falsely generated through the lens of our own eyes. Trying to put a code on liberty is like wearing a shower cap to the beach. It was never His idea to have His works auctioned like it is done on Sotheby or Artsy for billions of dollars but that is what happens indefinitely when insatiable desires run through the ventricles of our heart.

The manufacturer knows His product. The date of manufacture, expiry date, exact item number, optimum servicing times, production materials, and our hidden functionalities are common information to our manufacturer. Failure, albeit skin-tingling and shameful, is one of the purest feedbacks in any manufacturing process. The human heart is the door to the greatest mystery to science: the human spirit. The spirit; the focal centre of our tripartite being is what determines what we are and what get in this waking realm. We are the only species who seem to somehow believe we can function effectively without our Creator. Prideful eh?

The human heart is cunningly deceptive and deceitful; it is a complex mystery as to why, but my answer to it is that it certainly found itself in the wrong realm. The meaty gift that pumps blood to every vessel, fibre, and crevice of our body in 60 to 100 per minute can be a liar. Yes, you heard right. The red house that speaks lies when not tidy: the human heart. How does one then design a cunning house?

In my three years of designing and fascination with how elements come together, I have learned a lot from pioneers and done extensive research on both dead and living legendary designers. Everyone seems to agree with one thing: the lighting of a project is the priority. Light sets the tone, light eliminates doubt, light restores visibility, light brings pleasant outlooks, light brings peace, light brings accentuation of depth, width and height, and light is indeed sweet. The unanimous first hurdle to making every space functional is how light is coordinated.

The peace that natural room light brings is easy on the eye and brings clarity to the thoughts and actions of those who sit under it. Anything that takes your peace is too expensive, would you agree? Nobody must be a negotiator and a dictator to your lighting base as an architectural designer else your handwork is not getting the glow and expression it deserves.

“Illusion comes into being as part of the pleasure,” said the Genoan designer Lorenzo Mongiardino. The illusion of light is the architect of all-optical chaos but a master of none because its role is to deceive the retina and the brain. The chief instigators of the lies in a heart are mirages and vapours of illustrations of something called nothing. As a “garbage in, garbage out” systemic device, the human heart regurgitates whatever it is fed. Whether the guy in whitish-grey uniforms called the brain in the watchtower of the cerebral cortex agrees with it or not, the heart is an autonomous entity that can contradict and overwrite countless hours of research & analysis done by the brain. It is a great paradox that has an intrinsic ability to be the best defensive unit in the body and also the vilest dictator with an affinity for messy and uncanny things. It can sow discord where there is peace for “fun” and also show love and heap praises of encouragement where there are evident inactions.

There is something that transcends beyond academic prowess and scientific expertise and it is called “the truth”. The one thing supercomputers cannot process without making a rhetorical bias or a definite assumption is truth. What is the truth? What makes what we think is right right? A seemingly easy question that cracks the heads of noble scholars. Not until I found the reality of John 8:32, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”. Do you mean to tell me anything that does not set or make me free is not the truth or its true interpretation? Yes. Truth is the only real gift to human beings. Compliance to truths or rebellion against truths indefinitely leads to glaring empirical pieces of evidence of both worlds over time. Truth neither qualifies to be categorized as hardware or software. All truths are parallels. Truth only gets titrated by human interpretations but it scoffs and laughs at the futile effort because it possesses the power to stand alone in any dark room. The efficacy and widespread modern acceptance of groupthink do not alter what is true. Truth in itself is raw and pure.

Hear me, if the painter is the only one who knows the real reason behind his paintings, does that make all interpretations a fallacy? Absolutely not. Truly, you cannot receive what is not there and you cannot give what you do not have. The existence of illusions that can juggle the emotions of the art and create a faux sense of knowledge is melted away once the light of the painter comes through his/her reasoning. True light is peaceable, freeing and indefinitely liberating. Illusions lure with a dosage of peace, which is cerebral and earthly while it often diminishes with time. We are as much light as your proximity to The Light. Scientific advancements make it possible to process thousands of researches daily by just a simple theory of viewing tiny objects or units under focused Light. This is the Holy Grail of true freedom: How everything looks under Light.

The undying devotion of the heart is to be connected and patterned to it’s Maker. When this is not so for a short while, it begins to create stories of an illusion that is equivocal, incoherent and oftentimes false akin to the properties of the commensalism it so desires. The soul then craves for light to function. In the absence of light, the desperation of the soul would work with whatever is available just to “live” for functionality’s sake. Ladies and gents, that is the ticking timebomb we find ourselves in if we do not find and spend time in Light. The thoughts and voice notes of the Creator (The word of God) the truest mirror and Light there exists in our galaxy is luckily available. Without borders, without fail. Exchanging our thoughts for His thoughts is our first step to true freedom, not bondage. Every worthwhile venture in this Pandora’s box called life is resisted by some form of opposition. There might be lapses but when it comes to the matter of the heart, the right direction is better than speed.

Lastly, you’re the chief architect of your own life and no one can take that away from you. Design your heart to bring everything big, small, easy, or complex under the Light and you will eventually be successful. It then becomes a matter of when rather than how. This has been my joyous, tearful, comical, and serious discovery in my 3 years of designing, learning, and improving. I write this to my future self 5 years from now and It is my wish this can help a sister or a brother obviate unnecessary pain in our journey to be and do better. Selah.