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Observations on Human Connection & Contribution

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#127: Creative acts

I’m constantly falling in love with one piece of creativity or another. It might be a song that I can’t stop moving to, a sharp stand-up bit, a piece of heritage pottery, or an interestingly woven scarf. Creators and their acts of creativity have always felt magnetic to me. The artist’s studio feels like the epicenter of cultural, intellectual, material and spiritual evolution. I think of studios as any space where ideas get to surface, mix and remix; where they are chiseled with care, and offered to the world with courage.

In the presence of work I loved, I’d instinctively think “Now this right here is the epitome of the craft.” It was a kneejerk thought in an awe-filled younger self. Then another maker or maker collective would show up and absolutely floor me. They were not only musicians, writers, comics, poets, sculptors, painters, weavers, actors, and directors; they were also facilitators, chefs, scientists, business leaders, politicians, designers, and journalists. Some were interesting combinations of more than one craft. My creative loves were sprouting everywhere.

Alongside awe there was a deep longing to be them. This wasn’t hero-worship. I wanted to be as magnetized by my craft as they were. I wish I could absorb by osmosis how they did what they did: their passion, seeming ease and grace. I’d be curious about their influences, journey and the solitary experience of being them when nobody was watching. I thought these people were unique.

I now see is that this love of craft is all around us. There’s passion and inspiration at every turn. There are people breathing new life into my long-standing neighborhood bookstore and community hub. There’s Amanda, my wonderfully creative and kind hairdresser, who built the most welcoming hair studio from scratch. There’s David, who is dedicated to building relational cultures as a tool for social change and healing. Not everyone has a Wikipedia page but everyone has a rich creative backstory and is magnetized by their craft.

Here’s my current thinking about creative acts:

  • No one creative act can be the epitome of a craft. Each work is a point-in-time drop into a larger ongoing creative conversation.
  • Impact doesn’t wait for us to become broadly-known. Every creator has precious influences and as they create, they start inspiring and influencing others even before they become “known”. Also, there are countless impactful niches. We inspire and influence others even if when don’t become “known” in popular culture.
  • What we know or are curious about is the source of all we create. When we create, we tap into our Venn diagram of influences, experiences and perspectives. That is our personal source code.
  • We get more and more magnetized as we create. This happens organically when we get down to the business of creating what we genuinely value, just like the artists in their studios.

“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”― Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter

#122: Momentum requires caring, but recovery requires letting go

Learnings from momentum, failure, and recovery

I’ve been away from this space for a bit; I was trying to do something big and intense that I’ve been hesitant to even attempt. I finally faced my fears. I created a stable psychological base and leapt knowing I might fail. And fail I did. The speed of failure was unexpected and the loss has reverberated in unexpected ways. It has also been an unexpected teacher. The observations and learnings are still unfolding and, over the next few weeks, I’ll share a few that are top of mind. May these be helpful to others.

Here’s the first one: Momentum requires caring but recovery requires letting go.

I knew going in that there was a high likelihood of failure so my goal in trying wasn’t to succeed at all costs, it was to minimize regrets and squash future “what-ifs”. I thought I’d give it a shot and move on if I failed. But my path was littered with obstacles and I could only build momentum by admitting to myself that I cared about the outcome and that it wasn’t all nonchalant under the surface. Once I acknowledged this truth though, I became more attached to specific outcomes. I gave my best in the service of a vision but giving it my all melted my internal boundaries. I started dreaming just a bit more even as I tried to be even-keeled.

I looked back at my hard road and I looked ahead at the potentially positive outcome. I thought maybe everything was harder for me for a reason, maybe I was meant to enjoy the richer sweetness of delayed joy. I didn’t even realize I was weaving these ephemeral stories. Although these stories were fleeting, they left enough of a mark that I started becoming a wee bit more attached to outcome. Even when I knew I was facing failure, there was a part of me quietly looking for the silver lining: “maybe the sweet ending will come in a different way…if I just keep going.”

The reality is that I don’t know why I was nudged in this direction by my psyche or the powers that be. I know definitively that this experience has added to my personal history and given me a glimpse of a life experience I didn’t have, and in turn created another flow of empathy. A big personal realization is that the act of letting go needs to be absolute and without caveats.

Abhyasa (practice) and Vairagya (non-attachment), is a core principle of Yoga philosophy that helps me in letting go whenever I get stuck.

  • Abhyasa means having an attitude of persistent effort but it’s a specific flavor of effort; it requires a focus on mental stability and not the outcome. This stance doesn’t just appear out of the blue at our time of need, it’s an everyday practice. It’s recommended we practice this type of effort uninterruptedly for a long period time of time so it becomes a part of our operating philosophy.
  • Vairagya is about learning to let go of the many attachments, cravings, aversions, fears, and false identities that get layered on just by the act of living and engaging in the world. This non-attachment isn’t about abandoning things and not enjoying life, it’s about the relationships we create with everything around us. We attach value, create dogma, feel aversion based on our subjective interpretations and then spend inordinate effort craving or avoiding things and situations. Vairagya is a tool to cut through these erroneous perceptions and projections to reclaim mental and emotional stability.

Abhyasa and vairagya represent two essential aspects of a spiritual life that, when combined, liberate us from everyday injuries. These principles help us create a dynamic balance on the polarity of practicing and caring on one end, and letting go on the other.

Failure is never easy but it’s a pretty regular life-occurrence. Being able to move through loss without letting our sense of self and psyche get too dinged is a helpful skill. It makes us more capable of navigating loss, taking chances, and contributing in life without the fear of getting burned. 

“The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.”— Tara Brach, psychologist and meditation teacher

Photo credit:  thelittlelabs. Click image or here to view animation.

#118: Let it flow

Guidance on imagination and creativity is often designed to help us unblock what’s already there within. We are nudged to trust ourselves, tune into our unique expression and—bit by bit—let go of the debilitating psychic poisons we’ve accumulated over time. These could be unkind words or harsh circumstances that left an imprint and now bottle us up when all we really want to do is flow more freely.

You might be thinking this doesn’t apply to you, but think again. I’ve had to bust some of my own creativity misconceptions over the last few months. Here are a few:

  • I’m not an artist so this doesn’t apply to me: Creativity and imagination aren’t just for people whose professional bios include the term “artist”. They are our resting state as living beings. Have breath = will create. Whatever we see out in the world, even the most analytical and left-brain activities are born out of someone’s imagination and creative action. It’s easier to apply ideas around creativity to Hollywood than it is to companies listed on S&P 500 but Tesla prototypes, Chat GPT and annual business plans involve countless people embracing possibility and their creative expression.
  • I don’t hold back, look at all the chances I’ve taken in life: I’ve taken some big detours and gone against the grain at pretty much every turn in life, but I still hold back in many ways. I notice it’s easier to hold back as I gain more life experience. Unlike plants and animals that can’t help but evolve into their next iteration, my intellect gets in the way of creating. It tries to protect me by nudging me to “please be quiet” or offering an even more insidious “not yet”. The mind very easily takes over the pure, joyful and messy acts of creation.
  • But…I create art so freely!: We live contextual lives. I may be very free playing with watercolors but when things really count, like in my work, do I really let it rip? I feel the need to have my act together before I allow creativity to shine through. I over-strategize at the expense of joy and flow. The grownup me thinks the childlike me is wasting time when it’s actually deep in problem-solving mode. The play we do in low-stakes spaces doesn’t always translate into behavior in high-stakes spaces. Bringing joy into serious, grownup workspaces is challenging work. Creativity wants us to be ok with messy first and fifth drafts, and the doodles in the margins they come with.
  • I don’t think I’m afraid of what others think, I like people: If joy unlocks creative expression, trust keeps it going. I may like people but creative blossoming needs a specific type of incubation. The work starts in the dark and ideally sees light progressively. We first share it with trusted others who understand us emotionally and the work practically. They share honest, generous and kind feedback with the sole objective of making the work more potent. Such combination and input is a gift, and an important part of the process because it fertilizes our vision and confidence. We then need to share the work more broadly. This is by far the scariest part of the process, because some of the broader audience will not be kind. But we have to share because nothing of consequence takes life without seeing light. As simple as that. We will get injured and when we do, we’ll have to find ways to recover quickly, otherwise we’ll circle back up to point #2 above and start holding back.

Creativity takes us to our existential core: What am I here to contribute? Will it be of any value? What if I totally butcher it…will they laugh at me, ignore me, hate me?

We can’t wish these questions away. They probably come up for everyone at some point. We can only do them away. Notice them and do, notice and do, notice and do and their self-protective hold weakens in time. Especially when we see that these doubts are choking all the joy inside. Let it flow and maybe then it’ll start gushing out.

“Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.”— Richard Buckminster Fuller: architect, systems theorist, inventor, philosopher, writer and futurist.

PS: Highly recommend the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron for creative recovery.

#116: Choosing our axis and rotations

Rotation is the action of spinning on an axis or a center, and we often associate this movement with the planets. It is Earth’s habitual movement that gives us the experience of day and night. Living beings also seem to spin around an invisible central axis, which creates our visible rotations. Animals have recurrent migratory and homing patterns. Humans go back and forth to school, work, grocery stores, to spend time with loved ones, and to entertainment spots. All of us like kites connected to invisible threads anchored somewhere in our life.

The central axis around which any individual spins is determined by their biological needs—both physical and emotional—and these keep evolving as we develop. This invisible and ever-present axis manifests clearly in the combination of roles one inhabits: a student, a sibling, an entrepreneur, caregiver, athlete and so on. These roles in turn determine how we use our time: the places, people, and activities that fill our days. Just like for Earth, our axis (needs and roles) determines our rotations (time spent in habitual engagements).

But unlike Earth, our axis shifts in response to life changes, both big and relatively small: moves, babies, deaths, acute injuries, new friendships, or home repair projects. We take on new roles or drop old ones. Consequently, the makeup of our time shifts quite organically; where we spend it, with whom, and how alter without too much effort. A change in our needs and roles changes our lived footprint. A shift in axis, changes the rotation.

Axis and rotations are inseparable from living organisms. They create the observable footprint of our days and, over time, a life. We can intentionally choose them or they come into form on their own by the mere fact that we’re alive.

If we wish to change our life experience, a useful first step might be to note the axis around which our life is anchored. While it’s not always easy or desirable to shift our axis, we do it many times over a lifetime when we make big life moves. Rotations rarely venture far from the axis we’ve settled into. Even so, it’s easier to shift the structure of our rotations vs. our axis. We can choose the physical places and online spaces we spend free time in, the relationships and interests we cultivate, ideas and information we engage with, and our patterns of engagement and rest.

Most of us have more agency over our life and attention than we realize, and we must exercise it. When we don’t, we end up creating a life that looks nothing like the one we crave to live. Unlike our beloved Earth, we have the power to see our habitual patterns and make changes.

“We give no significance to human attention. Things open up and change only in response to attention. Otherwise old cycles repeat endlessly.”— Sadhguru, yogi, mystic and teacher

#115: Who we become on the sidelines of conflict

I’m part of many different professional tidepools, each with a group chat on Signal or Whatsapp. The Israel-Gaza conflict has surfaced in these spaces over the past month with layers of aches and perspectives. The personal and collective histories like a messy bundle of electrical wires: inextricably enmeshed and full of charge.

While Israel and Palestine isn’t the land of my ancestors, my elders experienced identity-driven geopolitical conflict alongside the fear, anger, hate and violence it generates. Their forceful expulsion from their birthland is full of stories of slaughter. I was also raised in a beautifully plural society and have experienced the turmoil that sometimes rears its head in true diversity. I’ve seen the nature of individual and collective conversations we have with each other during such times.

Our first step is ususally to share and explain our side. If we are genuinely and fully met in our grief, we feel more secure stepping out further to try and understand the other side. Most conversations get stuck at the first stage because we don’t typically acknowledge another’s pain in public (or private) discourse. We also shy away from acknowledgement because it invites action of some sort; which may be unclear, hard, or even impossible.

So the spaces for shared sense-making—where people bring in their deepest emotion, truest thoughts and questions, with a desire to shape a healthier future—are rare. This shared sense-making is hard enough face to face with people we love and issues we have known about all our lives. It’s even harder in group chats or social media with people and issues we know little about.

Although we all sense that group chats are a choppy tool for perspective sharing and sense making, we have the constraints and tools that we have so we engage. And like most spaces, a few voices step into the circle to share, some with more comfort and assertion than others. Whether we are inside the circle or silent on the periphery, we listen and digest. We learn about human nature and our own nature by coming to terms with our comfort, discomfort and boundaries. We gain a sense of how we like to learn and engage. We create perspectives about ourselves, people groups, and whole cultures. Often without realizing, we veer towards hope, helplessness or cynicism. All these become muscle memory.

Then one day down the line, even if we stand quietly in this conversation, we will step inside some other circle and share our thoughts. We might do this with nuance or binaries, with an attitude of sensing or ripping apart another’s perspective. One thing is for sure, how we behave when we enter that circle in the future will be guided by who we are becoming while on the sidelines today.

“At our best, we serve as inadvertent triggers for each other’s eventual illumination.”— Mark Nepo, Poet

PS: This is a good one about not having a hot take on everything, which forces us to have a definitive stance on issues when first a posture of learning and inquiry is better suited— Pick a Side. Pick a Side. Pick a Side. Now.