IRIS VAN HERPEN - FALL 2026 COUTURE

I wrote this a few months after moving to Colorado.

All that is, tells me that it is impossible for me to be lost.

I can only feel lost.

There is a part of me that wonders how this can be true. When there is a lack of direction, a general feeling that I have no control, or no ease in life, what then?

I have spent so much of the last two years trying to figure things out. Trying to live, not just survive.

I do see my accountability. I can see the thread of my own actions and how I have come to be here.

I do not like relying on others. To be honest, I feel best when I can do everything myself.

Now, let’s start from the present.

Sometimes, in starting over, we have to remember who we are.

More importantly, what we are.

From my experience, we are usually much more than what we believe ourselves to be.

Everything is different now, I’m different. It feels like a new chapter in my life.

To me, it signifies the beginning of a new cycle.

I realized that this energy feels like the first days of fall. It is the energy of renewal. A fresh perspective. A newfound understanding of my own knowingness.

In the year I have been in Colorado, I have realized a few things about myself.

Metacognition is a real thing.

In fact, there is extensive research surrounding it. It speaks to how people think about and perceive themselves. That is the part I am talking about.

It is the ability to perceive yourself while you are perceiving yourself. Then there is another version of you looking at the whole of you.

It is the ability to understand yourself within a moment while still experiencing that moment, asking yourself questions about who you are and what you are experiencing as it happens.

Throughout my life, I have had an interesting relationship with time.

It has never seemed to happen for me linearly.

I have always experienced things outside of time.

Recently, the present has been extremely loud.

Uncomfortably loud.

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At the same time, I am still experiencing things that are not happening within my present.

A friend suggested that I watch HBO’s *Watchmen*. I was already very familiar with the franchise, but I had not seen the television series, which was released in 2019.

The eighth episode is called “A God Walks into Abar.”

In the episode, Doctor Manhattan meets Angela Abar, the woman who will become his wife. He tells her that they will spend ten years together.

Doctor Manhattan does not experience time linearly. He experiences his past, present, and future simultaneously.

This is how I experience time.

A few days later, I found a man on a podcast talking about how he experiences time and how time is nonlinear for him as well.

A wave of comfort washed over me.

I felt inspired to go back and watch the final episode of *Watchmen*.

I realized that when I experience life outside of a linear scope, I am still trying to remain the focal point of the experience.

I believe this is the point of contention for me.

I am experiencing time from the perspective of trying to understand where there is a gap within existence itself.

The experience I am having does not match the now.

I have only recently discovered that my focus should not be on finding answers within the experience.

The focus is simply to observe it so that I can remain in a state of discovery.

This brings me to my unconventional understanding of ambition and achievement.

I have already talked about this, but I think it is worth mentioning again.

Needless to say, everything I write is based on my lived experience. This is simply how I experience the world and my own existence.

I am not saying this is LAW.

This is my EXPERIENCE.

Recently, I realized that my entire life has been built around the idea of achievement.

I had to achieve love.

Success.

Friendship.

I did not actually believe that I had to be the person other people wanted me to be.

However, I did believe that I had to become a version of myself that other people could tolerate and understand.

I had to find a way to become a version of myself who could exist inside a box.

That version of me was tolerable.

For so much of my life, I felt that I could not have what I wanted.

I believed I had to achieve a certain place within myself before I could have the love I wanted, the friendships I wanted, or the success I wanted.

while living in Texas, I lost my framing.

Every version of myself that I had experienced was gone.

In fact, everything was gone.

One day, I woke up and the world was different.

In Colorado, I have found myself losing even more of my framing.

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This part began a few weeks ago when I heard a voice say to me:

“Let everything go, in a powerful way that will change the deformation of your existence.”

When I first heard this, I did not know what to do.

I felt as though I had been given an equation that I now had to solve, but I did not have all the information.

We all have a very specific framing around existence.

That framing is based on the lives we have lived.

Our experiences tell us so much about the world, about ourselves, and about what we believe is possible within our lives.

My existence was primarily built around achievement.

I felt as though I needed someone to see me.

I needed to help people see me.

I had to earn their respect.

Earn their love.

I am now moving through the layers of understanding that I am whole as I am.

I have never needed to earn someone’s respect or love.

I have been trying to understand my life’s narrative while living it.

Now, I find it best to remain in discovery and observation of my own existence.

I am still trying to get out of my own way.

With Resonance,
Joseph