"Finding your home" - Thoughts on Art, Dreams, and Creation: part 2

TED - Elizabeth Gilbert: Success, failure and the drive to keep creating 

I just watched this TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love), and I thought it was a really nice follow-up to my previous post.  I love the way she describes following your creative passion as "finding your home" and "finding where you rightfully live."  It implies so much more about what it really means to follow your passion. 

"Following" implies a state of constant motion, pursuing, and it also implies something that is separate from yourself. 

"Finding your home," on the other hand, implies stability, constancy, and something that is innately part of yourself.  It implies that your passion and your identity as defined by your actions is something that you build and maintain throughout your life--not something that you have to chase around from place to place.  I think perhaps this is where true inner strength comes from: knowing where your creative home is.  If you maintain this foundation, this bed-rock, it can keep you "safe from the random hurricanes of outcome"--both good and bad.  Outcome is always half-random, and if you define yourself and your worth based on the external happenings of the moment--such as how other people react to you or your work--then how can you really know who you are? 

She ends her talk with a beautiful summary of her philosophy.  I'm glad that she specifically mentions addiction and infatuation--as the dark, tainted sides of love and passion, I think it's important to address them. 

"I don't know where you rightfully live, but I know that there is something in this world that you love more than you love yourself--something worthy, by the way.  So addiction and infatuation don't count, because we all know that those are not safe places to live, right?  The only trick is that you've got to identify the best, worthiest thing that you love most and then build your house right on top of it, and don't budge from it."

"It is better to dream your life than to live it" - Thoughts on Art, Dreams, and Creation

"Ambition intoxicates more than fame; desire makes all things blossom, and possession makes them whither away; it is better to dream your life than to live it, even though living it is still dreaming it, albeit less mysteriously and less clearly, in a dark, heavy dream, like the dream diffused though the dim awareness of ruminating beasts.  Shakespeare's plays are more beautiful when viewed in a study than when put on in the theater.  The poets who have created imperishable women in love have often only ever known humdrum servant girls from taverns, while the most envied voluptuaries are unable to grasp fully the life they lead, or rather the life that leads them.   

I knew a young boy of ten, of sickly disposition and precocious imagination, who had developed a purely cerebral love for an older girl. He would stay at his window for hours on end to see her walk by, wept if he didn't see her, wept even more if he did.  He spent moments with her that were very few and far between.  He stopped sleeping and eating.  One day, he threw himself out of his window.  People thought at first that despair at never getting close to his lady friend had filled him with the resolve to die.  They learnt that, on the contrary, he had just had a long conversation with her: she had been extremely nice to him.  Then people supposed that he had renounced the insipid days he still had to live, after this intoxication that he might never be able to experience again.  Frequent remarks he had previously made to one of his friends finally led people to deduce that he was filled with disappointment every time he saw the sovereign lady of his dreams; but as soon as she had left, his fertile imagination restored all her power to the absent girl, and he would start to long her her again.  After that final interview in which he had, in his already active and inventive fantasy, raised his lady friend to the high perfection of which her own nature was capable, and been filled with despair when he compared that imperfect perfection to the absolute perfection on which he lived and from which he was dying, he threw himself out of the window.  Subsequently, having been reduced to idiocy, he lived for a long time, since his fall had left him with no memory of his soul, his mind, or of the words of his lady friend, whom he now met without seeing her.  In spite of supplications and threats, she married him, and died several years later, without having managed to make him recognize her.  

Life is like this girl.  We dream of it, and we love what we have dreamt up.  We must not try to live it: we throw ourselves, like that boy, into a state of stupidity--but not all at once: everything in life deteriorates by imperceptible degrees.  Within ten years, we do not recognise our dreams, we deny them, we live, like an ox, for the grass we graze on moment by moment.  And from our marriage with death, who knows if we will arise as conscious, immortal beings?"

~Marcel Proust

(from Pleasures and Days: Nostalgia - Daydreams Under Changing Skies, part 6)

I see so much of myself in Proust.  Not always the best parts of me, but real parts of me none-the-less.  Like Proust, I'm a perpetual dreamer, highly introspective, and I often prefer the company of the characters in my head to that of real people.  What I find interesting, is that in spite of this common tendency, Proust and I seem to have very different opinions about how it affects our lives.  While I am constantly pushing myself to spend less time alone, to go out among real people and have real life experiences, Proust extols the world of dreams.  Numerous times throughout Pleasures and Days, he claims the imagination's superiority over travel, over conversation, over performances and concerts, over all of life's experiences--just as here, he claims the superiority of imagined love over real love.  Or perhaps he thinks that there is no real love: at least, not the kind that fills your heart and soul and transforms your entire world for as long as it lasts.  On the other hand, I know from experience that, although imagination is a wonderful thing, you can easily waste away inside of it; and although great adventures and romances, and moments deliciously charged with significance, are possible at any given moment in your mind, living off of them is like eating shadows.  It can never compare with the taste of meaningful connections with real people, and the challenging and heart-filling experiences of real life.  The problem is that the latter are exponentially harder to come by.  But trying to live off dreams alone is a one-way ticket to depression.  Your mind will wither away and became stagnant--stupid--one that no longer grows, or changes, or learns, one that ceases to observe the infinite glories and banalities of life.   Daydreams, when exploited in excess, are like drugs; it's easy to take a shot of them for a quick-fix, but it's no substitute for real-life joys.  

But I'm sure, though Proust claims the imagination's superiority over all and advocates total seclusion as a means of letting your mind flourish, he clearly spent his fair share of time in the real world.  How else could he have written all these poignant vignettes at the age of 25, creating human portraits that can pack the significance and subtlety of an entire life into 10 pages?  He knew real life, and he understood it better than most.  What's so hard for someone like Proust, though, is that having an imagination is so vivid and so wonderful makes it impossible for life to compare with the extraordinary things you create in your head.  As Scott Adams once pointed out: "Imagination has a way of breeding disappointment."  

Yearnings

The cure for pain is in the pain.
Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both,
you don't belong with us. - See more at: http://allspirit.co.uk/rumilovers.html#sthash.DLUmUn3q.dpuf

The cure for pain is in the pain.
Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both,
you don't belong with us. - See more at: http://allspirit.co.uk/rumilovers.html#sthash.DLUmUn3q.dpuf

The cure for pain is in the pain.
Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both,
you don't belong with us. - See more at: http://allspirit.co.uk/rumilovers.html#sthash.DLUmUn3q.dpuf

The cure for pain is in the pain.
Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both,
you don't belong with us. - See more at: http://allspirit.co.uk/rumilovers.html#sthash.DLUmUn3q.dpuf

I think people in general have a tendency to overlook their own emotions.  Either you dislike what you're feeling, so you try to distance yourself from it; or you feel too busy to deal with it; or you can't make sense out of it, so you try to tell yourself, "There's no reason for me to feel that way."  But I disagree.  There is always a reason for every feeling, even if that reason is subconscious.  However, whether or not you understand the origin or reason behind every feeling doesn't entirely matter.  One of the fundamentals of Rumi's philosophy is that all human emotion serves a purpose.  Feelings are neither arbitrary nor meaningless.  Every yearning, every desire you have exists so that you will seek out the things you really need--not only to live, but also to be a complete human being.  We feel hunger so that we will eat.  We feel tired so that we will sleep.  We yearn to be creative and express ourselves because we need to create things.  We yearn for God, for a higher spiritual order, because we need to make spiritual sense of our universe.  It is not enough to just exist.  We must know why.  We must feel there is a purpose to our being.  

I'm not saying that simply wanting there to be a God is a justification for believing in God.  I think Rumi's idea is that, if there is a yearning, there must be an answer to that yearning.  If we are thirsty, we must drink.  No one would deny this.  But does it not logically follow then, that if someone deeply longs to make music, they must make music?  Why is it that so many famous artists throughout history have been destitute, starving, cast out of society, and yet somehow felt overwhelmingly compelled, not to seek out a decent paying job, but rather to make art?  As Vincent van Gogh said in a letter to his brother, "Sometimes I draw . . . almost against my will, but it is a hard and difficult struggle to draw well."  Why on earth would he choose to spend his time doing such a seemingly fruitless activity, when he lived in extreme poverty and only sold one painting in his entire lifetime?  Because he had a hunger that needed to be fed: a hunger as real and demanding to him as any physical hunger.  

This is where it gets difficult, I think.  Everyone understands hunger, thirst, and tiredness because we all feel it in essentially the same way.  But not everyone feels the need to draw, or play sports, or commune with God.  Some people feel these yearnings so powerfully that it drives their entire lives, while others might feel that same yearning not at all.  Still more people might feel a moderate amount of this or that desire, but not to the point where they would make such sacrifices as van Gogh did.  When it comes to non-physical needs, it takes a great deal of empathy and patience to understand what drives people to do what they do.  However, like Rumi, I believe that nothing we feel is without significance.  Although making music, writing a story, or playing a sport might not be essential to life in the physical sense, it is essential in the spiritual sense.  It is not water for our bodies, but for our souls.  Whatever you do that makes you feel most truly happy and whole, that is your purpose in life.  The trick is that it's up to you to find the right balance of these things in your life, and to be strong enough to insist on the things you need, even if other people don't understand them.    

Of course, then you must ask, what if you yearn to do something wrong?  What if the fruition of your desire would be harmful to other people, or even to yourself?  Obviously you can't just use the excuse that you wanted to do it, so therefore it must be right.  Our feelings and our desires need to be interpreted, balanced, and acted upon in a constructive way.  An emotion may be leading you towards the right place, but you must interpret it correctly and find the right way to get there.  Not all pathways to an objective are equal.  For example, if you feel that a situation in your life is getting alarmingly out of control, perhaps your first impulse would be take control of it through violence or intimidation.  That impulse is not the feeling you should follow.  What you really need to ask yourself is, what is upsetting to me about this situation and how can I fix it in the most effective, benevolent way possible?  Violence just leads to more violence, and running away from the situation just leaves it to be solved another day.  But if it's upsetting to you, that means it needs to change, and there is probably a decent way to fix if you just think about it.  I'm not saying that making that change is always easy, or that you can always do it without upsetting anybody, but most of the time, there is probably a constructive path that will lead you to what you really need.

Life hurts sometimes, but that pain only exists to tell us what we need.  Rumi said, "The cure for pain is in the pain."  It is a guide sent to lead you towards goodness and happiness.  Even if you are lonely or feel unfulfilled, don't run away from that feeling.  Don't ignore it.  Follow it. 

"That hurt we embrace becomes joy.  Call it to your arms where it can change."

We can only change when we recognize our problems and decide to face them.  If you feel broken, lost, empty, don't drown yourself in obligations and distractions.   Follow your grief to the place where you can be whole.  

The cure for pain is in the pain.
Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both,
you don't belong with us. - See more at: http://allspirit.co.uk/rumilovers.html#sthash.DLUmUn3q.dpuf

~~~~~~~~~~~

One night a man was crying,
 Allah! Allah!
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
"So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?"

The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.

He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage.
"Why did you stop praising?"

"Because I've never heard anything back."
 

"This longing
you express is the return message."

The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.

Your pure sadness
that wants help
is the secret cup.

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.

There are love dogs
no one knows the names of.

Give your life
to be one of them.

~Rumi 

Sources of inspiration for this post:
 
The Illuminated Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

The Fundamental Flaw in Ayn Rand’s Philosophy

The Philosophy

Atlas Shrugged is perhaps one of the most compelling books I have ever read.  I read it, just on a whim, when I was in high school, and since then it has stuck with me almost more than any other book.  The power of it lies in the characters, the world, the writing itself, and above all in Rand’s radical theory that being selfish is the only way to be moral.  She believed that, ultimately, doing what’s best for yourself is the best thing you can do, both for yourself and everyone around you.  She was the ultimate rationalist and the ultimate  meritocrat.  She envisioned a society in which the most productive and the most talented always end up on top, simply because they produce what is most useful to society.  Altruism is unnecessary because if people know that they will only receive good things by being a good, productive member of society, then they will shape up and begin making themselves useful to other people—because it is in their own self-interest.  If, on the other hand, they can expect welfare, charity, or any other hand-outs that they did not earn, she believed that society would disintegrate into one where the many take advantage of these hand-outs, while the few noble people continue to work hard because their inner moral strength allows them no other option.  This is the dystopic world that she presents in Atlas Shrugged.   

The Novel

Atlas Shrugged is a beast of a novel—over 1,000 pages long—and it is relentless in its lionizing of the enterprising individual, its paeans to rationalism, and its message that money is the only fair arbiter of the world, and that any government attempt to redistribute money in the name of making things more “fair” is doomed to failure.  As insane as it sounds when I describe it like that, this book completely captivated me from beginning to end.  For well over the first half I was truly fascinated by her ideas, her story, her dystopic world.  It was only as I got towards the end, that a creeping discomfort with her philosophy grew larger and larger in my mind.  By the time I turned the last page, I had figured out why.