Because either way, it’s all kind of amazing – what we get to do, what we get to attempt, what we sometimes get to commune with.
With death, all suffering would end. Doubt would end. Shame and guilt would end. All her questions would end. Memory – most mercifully of all – would end. She could quietly excuse herself from life.
What does any of that have to do with the quiet glory of merely making things, and then sharing those things with an open heart and no expectations?
Without bravery, their lives would remain small – far smaller than they probably wanted their lives to be.
Like a dog, I have pack needs; like a cat, he prefers a quieter house. As long as he is married to me, his house will never be quiet.
She stopped feeling like she was nothing more than a consumer, nothing more than the sum of her daily obligations and duties. She was making something.
The other problem with all this swinging through the vines of thought is that you are never where you are. You are always digging in the past or poking at the future, but rarely do you rest in this moment.
It seems to me that the less I fight my fear, the less it fights back.
I thought about the relentless thought-processing, soul-devouring machine that is my brain, and wondered how on earth I was ever going to master it.
You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm. – COLETTE.
Whether you think you’re brilliant or you think you’re a loser, just make whatever you need to make and toss it out there.
To even call somebody “a creative person” is almost laughably redundant; creativity is the hallmark of our species. We have the senses for it; we have the curiosity for it; we have the opposable thumbs for it; we have the rhythm for it; we have the language and the excitement and the innate connection to divinity for it.
Pure creativity is something better than a necessity; it’s a gift. It’s the frosting.
Thank you for the tribute of your honesty,” he said – which I thought then, and still think, was one of the most elegant things I’d ever heard anyone say.
Medicating the symptom of any illness without exploring its root cause is just a classically hare-brained Western way to think that anyone could ever get truly better.
I keep remembering one of my Guru’s teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you’re fortunate enough. But that’s not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it.
Once the troublesome mind “begins to compose speeches and dream up arguments, especially if these are clever, it will soon imagine it is doing important work.” But if you can surpass those thoughts, Teresa explained, and ascend toward God, “it is a glorious bewilderment, a heavenly madness, in which true wisdom is acquired.
What a stark and stunning thing was life – that such a cataclysm can enter and depart so quickly, and leave such wreckage behind!
Which is to say, the Romans didn’t believe that an exceptionally gifted person was a genius; they believed that an exceptionally gifted person had a genius.
Embrace the creativity and don’t care about the result. It’s better to be a beginner till the end of the life than waiting forever to be perfect.