Thoreau's Way
I'm sure it's a testament to my passionate nature and not true for everyone. I also know that some people would give anything for boring in their life right now. But for me, the greatest trap in life, the worst soul-sucker, and the quickest road to evil, is monotony.
It creeps up behind me sort of unpredictably, the sudden feeling that my work is vaguely meaningless and then the feeling that there's nothing after work I want to do all that much either. And I wonder what I'm going to do if I never get the zest back, the longing to
live deeply and suck out all the marrow of life.
It's a horrible thing when life feels like an endless waking and sleeping and of being too tired in between.
But this time I knew the reason. I recently finished a writing goal, a goal to "Do this, then move on to the next things." Only I didn't move on yet. And so for several days I haven't been living the motto on my cell phone, the wise words Gena Rowlands taught her son who's now a movie director and passed them on to us:
Create every day.
It's not so much a goal to publication. It's no longer the drive for fame or awards. But every day that I don't join in that wonderfully in-his-image sort of desire to make something, I feel pointless. Let there be... a better picture on that wall. Let there be... a blog post. Let there be....another chapter in the novel. We can think it, dream it up, long for it, and then make it be. It's a thrilling, wonderful kind of work.
So, I've picked the next project, and I'll do a bit of it every day. And I know from my history with that plan that my perspective will immediately follow - the zest, the living deliberately, the marrow.
Over at Felicity's blog, she's passing out the permission - the inspiration - to put out there whatever it is you've survived, even if it's just The Day - because if you've survived then you have a story to share. One commenter said that simply to live is sometimes the greatest example. And I so feel that. But for me, to live is to create. Or to put it more spiritually, to give. Otherwise, I'm not really living at all.