Vachon Imagined

When a woodpecker whittles wood, it refines it. It takes something whole and shapes it until it becomes something else. There is an innate need to do this; it is a woodpecker. It did not earn its name by pecking at steel. It has a specific medium, a particular relationship with the world, and humans are not so different.

Self-improvement is a kind of whittling. We are possessed by a force that urges us to make things better, to smooth rough edges, to become wiser, kinder, stronger, more successful. We shape ourselves from our own strength, believing there is a better version of us hidden somewhere beneath the bark.

But after enough attempts—especially when the reward never arrives, or arrives wearing a different face than we expected—we begin to question the process. We were promised happiness, peace, contentment. We worked diligently at the carving, yet somehow remained restless.

So we set down the tools for a moment.

We step back from all the whittling and wonder: What if I am not a project? What if before I was taught that this was wrong about me, or that was unacceptable, there was a moment when I existed without correction? What if there was a time when I was simply what I was?

Before the improvement.
Before the comparison.
Before the measuring and shaping.

What if I could meet that version of myself again?

Not the perfected self. Not the improved self. Not the self that finally earns peace.

Just the self that existed before the first cut was ever made.