“Creativity is the defeat of habit by originality.”
– Arthur Koestler
Creativity
The Next Note
“When you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that makes it good or bad.”
– Miles Davis
Our Real Work
“It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”
– Wendell Berry
Hold Your Love
“The right person will know how to hold your love. The right person will choose you just as deeply as you choose them. You will not have to quiet the way you care, you will never feel like you are too much. You will not have to beg for the love you deserve. One day, you will be met where you are. One day, you will be someone’s favorite thing, and you will not be confused you will not feel like you are fighting for someone who isn’t fighting for you. One day, you will understand that it never mattered how tightly you held on to the wrong people, how intensely you tried, because the right people were always going to find you. The right people were always going to stay.”
– A Gentle Reminder by Bianca Sparacino
You Are What You Love
“You are what you love, not what loves you. ”
― Charlie Kaufman
The World
“You don’t see the world as it is – you see the world as you are”.
– The Talmud
Books
“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
Feeling Nameless Feelings
“Consider that collectively, we are in a place where many of us are feeling nameless feelings right now. It is possible that years down the line, we may have to create new words to describe what we were feeling in this space. Some of the words we use to describe what we’re experiencing right now just might not feel like enough… and maybe, that’s okay… because we have never been here before. This is all brand new, and maybe, in time, the words will need to be new, too.
Perhaps, feeling what you need to feel is a process… and finding the language for those feelings is a process, too.”
You in Action
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open…”
– Martha Graham
Something More Concise
“I want something more concise, more simple, more serious; I want more soul and more love and more heart.”
– Vincent van Gogh
Pleasure in Work
“When we find pleasure in our work, we see how jobs and tasks, even ones that are challenging or difficult, can be done with purpose and engagement. Work, a necessary component of life, has the potential for both ecological responsibility and a sense of dignity. Finding pleasure in our work guides us in two ways: it helps us recognize personal work that is inspiring, gratifying, and productive; and it helps us humanize any workplace we find ourselves in.”
– Alice Waters
(From the book We are what we eat)
You Can’t Wait
“You can’t wait until life’s not hard anymore before you decide to be happy.”
– Nightbirdie
Approaches To Problems
Pessimism: We have a problem, but we can’t solve it
Optimism: We have a problem, and we can solve it
Responsibility: We have a problem. Can I help solve it?
Initiative: We have a problem. Here’s how I’m solving it
Born Into Communities
“Once upon a time people were born into communities and had to find their individuality. Today people are born individuals and have to find their communities.”
— K-Hole
(via Nalden)
Reading
“Reading is migratory, an act of transport, from one life to another, one mind to another.”
— Jenny Xie
(Thanks Patrick)
Critique vs Create
“It is far easier to critique than to create”
– Laurence Endersen
(via)
A Confession and a Struggle
“I’m a writer, and everything I write is both a confession and a struggle to understand things about myself and this world in which I live. This is what everyone’s work should be…whether you dance or paint or sing. It is a confession, a baring of your soul, your faults, those things you simply cannot or will not understand or accept. You stumble forward, confused, and you share. If you’re lucky, you learn something.”
– Arthur Miller
No Feeling is Final
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke
The Secret of Genius
“The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.”
– Aldous Huxley
103 Bits of Advice by Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly turned 70 last week and he gave us a gift: For the past few years, he’s jotted down bits of unsolicited advice each year and shared it with us. Some of my favorites are:
– Dont ever work for someone you dont want to become.
– Your growth as a conscious being is measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations you are willing to have.
– Courtesy costs nothing. Lower the toilet seat after use. Let the people in the elevator exit before you enter. Return shopping carts to their designated areas. When you borrow something, return it better shape (filled up, cleaned) than when you got it.
This one made me laugh:
– To keep young kids behaving on a car road trip, have a bag of their favorite candy and throw a piece out the window each time they misbehave.
Don’t Get Impatient
“This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don’t get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can’t do anything, don’t get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it’s ready to come undone. You have to realize it’s going to be a long process and that you’ll work on things slowly, one at a time.”
– Haruki Murakami
Do It Again
“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
― G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
(via Casper)