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Art

Your secret to a better life

March 23, 2010

A doc­u­men­tary on liv­ing hap­pily recently aired on PBS. A lot of the clips from the show (called This Emo­tional Life) are avail­able on YouTube (here). Here’s an inter­est­ing one on intimacy:

This par­tic­u­lar insight (from Eliz­a­beth Gilbert) was inter­est­ing to me partly because I’m read­ing her book Eat, Pray, Love at the moment. The anal­ogy she makes is part of the les­son she learns in her book. Her les­son was really the story she needed to learn to con­tinue on her path in a healthy way. (The les­son: basi­cally, that you have to make your­self happy).

The funny thing about these kinds of insights is that they’re hugely per­sonal. Gilbert’s insight, for exam­ple, is chal­lenged by another one from the exact same doc­u­men­tary. Rather than rely­ing on your­self, Dr. Nicholas Chris­takis’ insight is that ‘’Your Friends Can Make You Happy.’’ Both of these insights are right. Just in their dif­fer­ent ways.

For all of us, the story we find most com­pelling is the story that we need to hear. For Eliz­a­beth Gilbert it was a story that, very lit­er­ally, she needed to write her­self. And as she did, she made sense of things and came to have a bet­ter expe­ri­ence of life. The ulti­mate abil­ity might there­fore be the abil­ity to search for and to find (or to write) our own story –the story that we need to hear at the moment, to make sense of our own sit­u­a­tion and to move forward.

For me, my happiness-story is about the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. My mom is a men­tal health coun­cilor in the small, but glo­ri­ous Cana­dian town where I grew up. She says that becom­ing and stay­ing healthy is largely a mat­ter of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. When peo­ple feel that they can’t com­mu­ni­cate –that what they would like to say is taboo, or when they know it just wouldn’t be under­stood— it can be extremely hard on them. She says, “peo­ple need some­one to com­mu­ni­cate to –some­one they trust and who is a good lis­tener. A lot of peo­ple are car­ry­ing their own bag­gage and hon­estly can’t hear what other peo­ple are say­ing with­out think­ing of them­selves first.” Sim­ply giv­ing peo­ple a safe space to talk releases them to find new answers. Just by lis­ten­ing, you give them a gift.

The strength­en­ing power of shar­ing our­selves is prob­a­bly most evi­dent when we are strug­gling emo­tion­ally, but it’s also there in good times. This year, I’ve been writ­ing more and I’ve found it hugely edifying.

So, if PBS asked me for my com­ment, I’d say that feel­ing free to com­mu­ni­cate, to cre­ate, to share (and tak­ing advan­tage of that free­dom) is a big key to emo­tional health and ful­fill­ment.

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Fail your way to a billion dollars: life lessons from J.K. Rowling

March 17, 2010

Llloyd Jones (who tragically/hilariously failed to grad­u­ate uni­ver­sity because of library fines) once said that ‘’the men who try to do some­thing and fail are infi­nitely bet­ter than those who try to do noth­ing and suc­ceed.’’ We’ve all heard a lot of quotes like this grow­ing up (though rarely from peo­ple who failed to grad­u­ate because of library fines). Win­ston Churchill said that, “suc­cess is the abil­ity to go from one fail­ure to another with no loss of enthu­si­asm.” That ‘the path to suc­cess is paved with nec­es­sary fail­ure’ is maybe the com­mon­est of admo­ni­tions when things go wrong.

Like­wise, the uber-successful always, at some point, seem to credit their suc­cess with their own will­ing­ness to make mis­takes. And yet for some strange rea­son, I’d still rather win.

Can Harry Pot­ter help?

If you’re any­thing like me you prob­a­bly don’t go look­ing to JK Rowl­ing for advice on most of the impor­tant mat­ters in life (except, if you’re like me, at Hal­loween). How­ever, in the Spring of 2008 Har­vard Uni­ver­sity did. She was asked to address the grad­u­at­ing class. I imag­ine more than a few Har­var­dians feel a kin­dred con­nec­tion to the magically-gifted char­ac­ters at Hog­warts. (And yes, they really do call them­selves ‘’Harvardians”).

In her speech Rawl­ings dis­cussed fail­ure and imag­i­na­tion, and (sur­prise, sur­prise) the neces­sity of fail­i­ure. Her insights are fresh and worth read­ing (or watch­ing). I’ve listed my favorite below the video.

J. K. Rowl­ing On failure:

[For her]… fail­ure meant a strip­ping away of the inessen­tial. I stopped pre­tend­ing to myself that I was any­thing other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into fin­ish­ing the only work that mat­tered to me. Had I really suc­ceeded at any­thing else, I might never have found the deter­mi­na­tion to suc­ceed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some fail­ure in life is inevitable. It is impos­si­ble to live with­out fail­ing at some­thing, unless you live so cau­tiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Fail­ure gave me an inner secu­rity that I had never attained by pass­ing exam­i­na­tions. Fail­ure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I dis­cov­ered that I had a strong will, and more dis­ci­pline than I had sus­pected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

The knowl­edge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from set­backs means that you are, ever after, secure in your abil­ity to sur­vive. You will never truly know your­self, or the strength of your rela­tion­ships, until both have been tested by adver­sity. Such knowl­edge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qual­i­fi­ca­tion I ever earned.

J.K. Rowl­ing on imagination:

Choos­ing to live in nar­row spaces leads to a form of men­tal ago­ra­pho­bia, and that brings its own ter­rors. I think the will­fully unimag­i­na­tive see more mon­sters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathize enable real mon­sters. For with­out ever com­mit­ting an act of out­right evil our­selves, we col­lude with it, through our own apathy.

Greek author Plutarch: ‘’What we achieve inwardly will change our outer real­ity.” That is an aston­ish­ing state­ment and yet proven a thou­sand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable con­nec­tion with the out­side world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives sim­ply by existing.

If you choose to use your sta­tus and influ­ence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to iden­tify not only with the pow­er­ful, but with the pow­er­less; if you retain the abil­ity to imag­ine your­self into the lives of those who do not have your advan­tages, then it will not only be your proud fam­i­lies who cel­e­brate your exis­tence, but thou­sands and mil­lions of peo­ple whose real­ity you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside our­selves already: we have the power to imag­ine better.

My two cents

All of this actu­ally makes me think about pol­i­tics –about how the social­ist imag­i­na­tion is rooted in an under­stand­ing of inevitable fail­ure. (It’s not inevitable all the time, but sometimes).Whereas the cap­i­tal­ist (fis­cally right-wing) imag­i­na­tion is rooted in an under­stand­ing of what it takes to be suc­cess­ful. The two sides focus on dif­fer­ent aspects of suc­cess (free­dom from harm and suf­fer­ing, ver­sus the free­dom to suc­ceed) and each per­spec­tive car­ries its own lim­i­ta­tions and advantages.

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The 7 Benefits of Creative Practice

October 25, 2009

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Find­ing a way to be artis­tic can add tremen­dously to your qual­ity of life.

For most of us, much of our active time every day is dom­i­nated by task-completion-activities, things that aren’t par­tic­u­larly mean­ing­ful or impor­tant to us, but just have to get done. Cre­ative prac­tice is about mak­ing a time for meaning.

Here are some ben­e­fits of a cre­ative prac­tice: (Any­where where I’ve writ­ten ‘writ­ing’ feel free to sub­sti­tute any other kind of artis­tic activity).

1) To be hap­pier. Aristotle’s def­i­n­i­tion of hap­pi­ness is “deploy­ing your full force along lines of excel­lence.” Writ­ing allows you to do exactly that. It’s about dis­ci­pline and see­ing some­thing through. And I do find it makes me hap­pier, feel­ing a piece come to form. As Hugh Macleod says, “Every­body has their own pri­vate Mount Ever­est they were put on this earth to climb.”

2) To learn. Peo­ple always say, “Write what you know,” but writ­ing is always a process of dis­cov­ery. By writ­ing you’re not just doc­u­ment­ing what you already know, but you’re coming-to-know things you hadn’t yet realized.

3) It’s good for your career. Before I was hired for my most recent job I was Googled by my inter­view­ers. They men­tioned in my inter­view that they’d read by blog about Roger Fed­erer and were impressed. I could tell that they were more com­fort­able with me because they had some evi­dence of how my mind works. In a way, they knew me. It made me more of a known entity and slightly less of a risk. I don’t write my blog for the recog­ni­tion. But it’s nice.

4) To be gen­er­ous. When you share your art, you’re being gen­er­ous. Even the tini­est, hon­est obser­va­tion is a gift. (That’s what I think any­way). And gift-giving cre­ates com­mu­nity. If you share some­thing that peo­ple can read (or  look at and see truth in) that, if noth­ing else, is com­fort­ing to peo­ple.  Also by writ­ing, you put your­self out there. You make your­self a lit­tle vul­ner­a­ble. You show that you’re human and peo­ple appre­ci­ate that.

5) To keep a record. I sit in air­ports and cafes around the world, writ­ing mun­dane minor details about how the light is shin­ing in through the steam of my morn­ing cof­fee or about how the smell of saw­dust takes me back to my dad’s stu­dio above the garage on Sec­ond Street.  Tak­ing the moment to write these thoughts makes me aware of things I wouldn’t oth­er­wise notice. It helps me appre­ci­ate the moment, in the moment. And read­ing my notes later reminds me of the life I’m liv­ing. It shows me what I like about my life and explains, in lit­tle ways, how my life is com­ing together. Cather­ine Bowen said that, “Writ­ing … is not apart from liv­ing. Writ­ing is a kind of dou­ble liv­ing. The writer expe­ri­ences every­thing twice. Once in real­ity and once in that mir­ror which waits always before or behind.”

6) To stay bal­anced. We all want jobs that value our human­ness. But it’s okay for a job to just be a job. It doesn’t have to fill absolutely every void in our lives. Hugh MacLeod (in his ebook) shares what he calls his Sex and Cash The­ory. He explains it like this: “The cre­ative per­son basi­cally has two kinds of jobs. One is the sexy, cre­ative kind. Sec­ond is the kind that pays the bills. Some­times the task in hand cov­ers both bases, but not often. This tense dual­ity will always play cen­ter stage. It will never be tran­scended.” This the­ory sug­gests that it’s okay that your col­leagues value your ideas about life or appre­ci­ate your humour, because it’s just a job. In a way, it’s a good prob­lem, I find that the ten­sions from my work­ing life give me some­thing to write about. They feed my art. A few times, when I finally have no dis­trac­tions and all the time in the world to write, I draw a blank.

7) It feels good. Author Natalie Gold­berg com­pares her cre­ative prac­tice with exer­cise: “Some days you don’t want to run and you resist every step of the three miles, but you do it any­way. You prac­tice whether you want to or not. You don’t wait around for inspi­ra­tion and a deep desire to run… You just do it. And in the mid­dle of the run, you love it. When you come to the end, you never want to stop… That’s how writ­ing is, too. Once you’re deep into it, you won­der what took you so long to finally set­tle down at the desk.”

In more ways than one, the future belongs to the cre­ative classes, the peo­ple who have devel­oped a voice and have both­ered to share.

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The Rebirth of Craft

May 12, 2009

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The Indus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion smoth­ered the trades. Qual­ity it seemed could never com­pete with the effi­ciency and rea­son­able prices of the assem­bly line. Bad news for artists, bad news for entre­pre­neurs and eventually/inevitably it would be bad news for con­sumers as well.

Sur­pris­ingly, even in the lows of this heavy reces­sion, sal­va­tion of these sim­ple ways has found an unlikely (if by now a pre­dictable) cham­pion: the internet.

The web has dra­mat­i­cally low­ered busi­ness entry-barriers, to the point that you can cre­ate a rea­son­able hobby busi­ness in 20 min­utes a week. Sites like Etsy and Dawanda (com­par­i­son info here) take care of the busi­ness side. You need only worry about the craft and then the mar­ket­ing. My friend Kathryn has set up a sweet lit­tle greet­ing cards busi­ness while she works full-time as a nurse and as she pre­pares for a new baby!

Qual­ity and artistry are fight­ing back.

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