Ever Forward

Every act of creation is an act of war. The mere development of talent is the most powerful weapon we have for enhancing consciousness. Each time we create, we open our eyes — and so the eyes of humanity — just a little wider.
 
Yet the more pure the creative act, the more powerful. So, in the war for consciousness, the best effort consists not in making war, but simply in making. It consists in creation not for the sake of consciousness, but for the sake of creation.
 
Ever forward.

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revised 7/3/09

Here’s more from the TED conference given by William McDonough: “Our culture tortures itself now, with tyrannies and concerns over limits and fear, but we can add this other dimension of abundance.”

These “tyrannies and concerns over limits and fear” infest everything. All our systems, from the family to the nation, all our relationships, our work, our hopes and dreams, even our vacations. It's all built around prevention of loss. In the end they lead to a culture of fear. These fears in our primordial condition emerge insecurities emerge in social tyrannies and fear-based responses to existence. They color our perspective and give energy to our responses, so that our default setting is to assume and plan for the worst.

We build whole societies this way and when these societies live shoulder to shoulder, war is inevitable. We tend to ignore or even reject the abundance all around us. Imagine a world where the default human setting was to assume the very best will happen, and to plan for it.

Our tyrannies infest daily life in tiny little ways. Here’s an example: the social revulsion against telling someone they have hurt your feelings. The practice of telling people how you feel when they hurt you is not wrong. It’s difficult, so we call it wrong in order to avoid doing it. We call it “socially unacceptable” but the truth is we're afraid of it. It's dysfunctional because it stifles communication. If it stifles communication, it hinders relationship.

Imagine a world where we felt fear at the prospect of NOT communicating our feelings. I don’t mean shouting or getting in someone’s face. I mean respectfully, courteously explaining yourself. Try it. I guarantee you hold back. And I further guarantee you hold back not because it’s wrong, but because it’s scary.

The tyrannies are not basic to us. But the fears from which the arise are. To fix the situation, we must undertake the adventure into ourselves. The simplest fear or insecurity is an opportunity to take the first tentative step on the road that leads to your utter-self, the self you dream of when no one's looking.

That is a mythic journey.

Ever forward.

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revised 7/3/09

I listened to a talk given by William McDonough to the TED forum called The Wisdom of Designing Cradle to Cradle. McDonough is a designer and his talk focuses on design principles conducive to a sustainable future. But he makes a great point that can be applied to emotional growth and the expansion of consciousness:

“As we look back at the basic state of affairs in which we design, we in a way need to go the primordial condition to understand the operating system and the frame conditions of the planet.”

Each of us has a primordial condition, an operating system, frame conditions. These things hold vital information that can explain why we fail, why we succeed, why we get angry under certain circumstances. Understanding these things can tell me a lot about what makes me feel threatened or secure. They are always there, under the surface, contributing energy to my responses and color to my perceptions. In order to effectively manage the details on the surface of my life, I have to understand the deeps.

Personal computer software provides a very useful metaphor for understanding this. You’ve got your operating system and you’ve got your applications. The applications are how I act, think, and speak in the day-to-day. It’s my relationships, my creative endeavors, my work, etc. The operating system is the underpinning on which the applications are placed. It gives my applications access to the computer’s memory and processors. It enables the applications to function. Or not. Photoshop can’t paint a pretty picture, however desperate I might be for my picture to look prettier, if the operating system is flawed or incompatible.

Here’s another angle: the operating system is universal, the applications are local. You use Word to write a novel; Word is local. You use Excel to track expenses; Excel is local. But the operating system is always there, influencing that local experience. The operating system is universal. It affects how I deal with all local circumstances. A broken operating system can’t fix itself, not even OS 10. It can’t even understand itself. But I can. I can look under the hood and find out what needs to change in my operating system to make my applications function properly.

Ever forward.

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Recently I watched a film about the life of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis. It’s called Control, and I recommend it. In the previews that come before the film, there’s a trailer for a film called Joy Division, which features producers and members of the band. Someone in that line up says something to the effect of: “Most bands rehearsed and played because they wanted to be rock stars. Joy Division did it because they had no choice.”

When you listen to Joy Division, it’s clear they had something nobody else had at the time, or has had since. They were one of those unique, unrepeatable moments in music. So I listened to one of their songs recently. It’s called Autosuggestion. It seems to reflect the feeling a lot of people have, the horribly limiting sense that the world consists of preexisting grooves from which we each must choose, regardless of our creative impulse. Here’s how Curtis puts it: “Here, everything is by design. Here, everything is kept inside.” The other half of his message is clear: “Take a chance and step outside. Lose some sleep and say you tried. Meet frustration face to face.”

Not much more to the lyrics than that and the song is more than six minutes long. But it’s all Curtis needs to get his point across, and it’s all I need to get his meaning. Curtis seems to have been one of those people who had to “step outside.” His art was stronger than his hesitation and it seems he had no choice. People like that are a sign post for the rest of us, the ones who DO have a choice. The ones who CAN choose to stay inside. And I guess I have nothing to add.

Ever forward.

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Seth Godin has another fine post on his blog. This one is strikingly relevant for me right now. He spends the first 90% of the page reminding us how lucky we all are (assuming we're Americans) to live where we do, when we do, and he's absolutely right. Good people have gone before us and made amazing things possible. But then Godin changes gears and becomes exactly what I needed to hear.

Not that the rest of his post wasn't food for thought. No, it's just that the end sounded like he was talking to me. Here's the last line of his post: "The object isn’t to be perfect. The goal isn’t to hold back until you’ve created something beyond reproach. I believe the opposite is true. Our birthright is to fail and to fail often, but to fail in search of something bigger than we can imagine. To do anything else is to waste it all." Those words, "something bigger than we can imagine," are luxurious, hopeful, stuffed with faith and eagerness. But this is the part that caught me: "to fail and to fail often."

I recently experienced a deeply significant failure. I didn't get that perfect job. No, seriously, this was the perfect job. I've never felt that way about an employment opportunity before. On most days the only thing that will satisfy my questing heart would be the ability to build my story-culture and get paid for it. But this opportunity seemed like the missing link, that rare situation that would pay my bills (pay them well) provide for all my needs, call upon all my talents, and share boundaries with my dream at the same time.

I was really disappointed.

But a day after getting the news, I'm hopeful again, and stronger, and more than ever I know what I want. Knowing what you want is something you can never learn from getting what you want. You have to fail. You have to draw near to the golden ring and then miss. If you're watching you'll come away with a memory not of the missed chance, but of what it was in that chance that drew you. Your vision of what you want for yourself will become clearer.

To fail and fail often. Yes, that's really how it is. This is not the first time I've failed in this quest I'm on. But each time I fail I find myself more capable than ever of achieving the dream. Yes, it can be maddening, but it's true. What isn't true is that "I was never meant to work there or it would have happened." It's also not true that "the right thing is still out there waiting." What is true is that the right thing now exists when it did not exist before. It exists a little more because of this failure. I hope I don't need to fail anymore, but maybe I do. I hope that if I do, I'll be able to remember that failing is as important as succeeding when you're trying to build a dream.

Ever forward.

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