By Jeff Gogué

Lately I have been fixated on distinctions.

A distinction sharpens meaning. It separates things that seem close but live in different places. Attractive instead of seductive. Determined instead of stubborn. Disciplined instead of obsessive. Small shifts, profound differences.

So let’s look at the difference between having, doing, and being.

You can have a tattoo, you can do a tattoo, or you can be a tattooer. Being carries the most weight. Doing comes next. Having is the lightest.

I started tattooing before I had any myself. Becoming a tattooer has been a long and steady trip for me. It is one of my greatest passions and has given me connection, purpose, and identity. I don’t just have tattoos, and I don’t just tattoo. I am, at my core, a tattooer. And what that means is that I am a speaker, an interpreter, a voice, and a deliverer of who people are, what they have lived through, what they reach for, and what they value most.

Seeing people arrive with their stories sitting heavy in their posture. I have watched them leave with a little of that weight lifted, even when the marks are still fresh. That exchange is not decoration. It is transformation. It is the moment where being matters more than anything else.

Tattooing is powerful because it plays with permanence. We alter someone for the rest of their life while life itself is brief and always moving. Energy might continue. Consciousness might not. I imagine that when we die we become everything all at once. One instant. One unimaginable surge.

But until then we experience everything from this tiny center point of awareness. Your whole world lives outside that point. You are it, experiencing it from within.

And that is the distinction. Not what you have. Not what you do, but who you are.