Break On Through To The Other Side

Embrace the duality of both more and less.

The times demand something new. Not new for new’s sake, but because the world has changed and we have to change with it. Fortunately, the best practices for a sustainable and generative creative life in today’s new era of abundance and access, are methodologies that have been tested through the ages. Yeah, I am not recommending anything new today, just pointing out we need them now more than ever before. But this is a post on the how and why of a creative process — not just for the results, but for how the doing influences everything else. You need a creative process to have a satisfying and fulfilling life.

One way to examine life is to explore how we suppress possibility by the limits and simplifications we apply to the world around us. It seems sort of obvious why we limit things as we do: there’s too much coming at us — or at least it sure feels that way. How many times have you or your friends cried out “I am overwhelmed!”? I hear it from everyone I know. I hear it in their face. That onslaught is what many fight against, and the simplification of the everyday is the tool most use in the wrestling match. We feel compelled to shut things out. We look away. We choose. We reduce. We frame things. Create borders where you are either with us or against us.

These limits are not true. They are not the complete picture. Not even close. They are just a coping mechanism. There is more, always more. And all that that everyone else is overlooking is rich terrain, even an incredible delight. Even those that have fastened on the blinders, they still feel this and suspect there is something better and know this is not all there is. So, despite a tendency to limit, restrict, and simplify, we keep on taking on more. We keep searching for the something better. And the world supplies. The world supplies more. Constantly. And we are back to feeling overwhelmed regardless of most of the choices we’ve made.

Welcome to the modern world. This routine may be common, but at the same time I suspect that most suspect it isn’t working any more. We have lost confidence in the old ways. Or rather, they have proven themselves obsolete. Yet, we don’t take on new tricks. We don’t rock the boat. Or make what we have more meaningful. We don’t usually dig in to try to find satisfaction in all we’ve accumulated or already do. We are not only not satisfied with what we have, we actually grow less pleased with the present, enhancing it with a patina of lack and disappointment, feeling that somehow, we missed out or are not even worthy. This feeling is simultaneously accurate and not true – but not in the ways we might suspect. We can do better, and we can also love and appreciate the present state deeper.