Taoism and creative expression for the sake of it under pressure (weekly wrap #24)
A quick one from gate C4 at Bangkok airport before I board my flight
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In some naïve but sincere effort to keep up my weekly discipline of these wraps, I’m scrambling to write something and get this out with less than half an hour to go before I board a connecting flight at Bangkok airport, on to Stockholm.
It’s fun writing (publicly) under some playful pressure like this. I did consider writing this a few days earlier and automating its release (of course very standard practice on the interwebs - as common as using AI to curate such wraps or getting a virtual assistant to do it - but where’s the fun in that!
Something I’m reading
I’m still reading Big Magic (as per last week’s wrap), and more on that later, but I came across something new very interesting that I’ve been scanning in bits and pieces.
Lao-tze's Tao-teh-king; Chinese-English. With introduction, transliteration, and notes by Paul Carus
I have read the Tao Te Ching before, but apparently Paul Carus’ translation is one of the earliest and most authentic presentations in English of this ancient text, foundational to Taoism.
I’m running out of time at the gate here, so may write up a separate post to explain why this text is particularly special and how I found it. Subscribe to get notified when I do. It’s free.
Something I’ve been pondering
Back to Big Magic by Liz Gilbert. There’s a part in the book I’ve been pondering quite a bit, that really struck a chord with me.
“I mean, if you cannot repeat a once-in-a-lifetime miracle— if you can never again reach the top— then why bother creating at all? Well, I can actually speak about this predicament from personal experience, because I myself was once “at the top”— with a book that sat on the bestseller list for more than three years. I can’t tell you how many people said to me during those years, “How are you ever going to top that?” They’d speak of my great good fortune as though it were a curse, not a blessing, and would speculate about how terrified I must feel at the prospect of not being able to reach such phenomenal heights again.
But such thinking assumes there is a “top”— and that reaching that top (and staying there) is the only motive one has to create. Such thinking assumes that the mysteries of inspiration operate on the same scale that we do— on a limited human scale of success and failure, of winning and losing, of comparison and competition, of commerce and reputation, of units sold and influence wielded. Such thinking assumes that you must be constantly victorious— not only against your peers, but also against an earlier version of your own poor self. Most dangerously of all, such thinking assumes that if you cannot win, then you must not continue to play.
But what does any of that have to do with vocation? What does any of that have to do with the pursuit of love? What does any of that have to do with the strange communion between the human and the magical? What does any of that have to do with faith? What does any of that have to do with the quiet glory of merely making things, and then sharing those things with an open heart and no expectations?” - Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic
What would it mean if you, me, and everyone embraced this spirit of creative expression without any thought of comparison, competition or commercialisation?
That’s it for this week. A ‘non-zero’, as some kids say these days.
Gotta fly.
Have a nice weekend.
Dev
P.S. Non-zero as in something better than nothing.