Baby, This Ain't No Draft

I love it when writers talk about life as a creative process, similar to telling a story but with only one draft.  It's a powerful concept and one that encourages us to take responsibility.  It also reminds us to be gutsy and artistic; in other words, some chances are worth taking because they enrich our life's canvas.  Making stories, after all, isn't just about fantasy -- real life is a creative work-in-progress.  The greats say it better than I do, of course, so here are a few individual takes:

"Now the will to create, or creative will, which pursues the artist and haunts the artist, I found to be applicable to our individual life, to our personal life, as it is to a work of art.  That is, we do have a will, a possibility, and a potential to change ourselves, and doing that is not an egocentric or turned-in activity.  It is an activity that ultimately affects, influences, and transforms an entire community.  So I feel the great changes in the world will come from a great change in our consciousness.  We have become more aware; we must not despair."  

Anais Nin, in "A New Center of Gravity," an essay from A Woman Speaks: The Lectures, Seminars and Interviews of Anais Nin

"Be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  Do not seek the answers which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."  

Rainer Maria Rilke (with thanks to KL Pereira, dear friend and talented writer, who keeps her exciting new blog here).

Jung, on a patient who always ended up attacking her employees, including her doctors:  "She was a very stately and imposing person, six feet tall -- and there was power behind her slaps, I can tell you!  She came, then, and we had a very good talk.  Then came the moment when I had to say something unpleasant to her.  Furious, she sprang to her feet and threatened to slap me.  I, too, jumped up, and said to her, 'Very well, you are the lady.  You hit first -- ladies first!  But then I hit back!'  And I meant it.  She fell back into her chair and deflated before my eyes.  'No one has ever said that to me before!' she protested.  From that moment on, the therapy began to succeed."  

From Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.G.Jung.  NB. Jung always afforded his patients the privilege of honesty.  He spoke what he felt, what he believed to be fair and authentic.  And from there, they began to rework their lives.  

"When lovers have sex that doesn't result in pregnancy, it becomes radiantly apparent what OTHER lasting results come from sex: intimacy, self-enlightenment, a source of strength and tenderness and imagination that really can't be uncovered in any other way."*

Susie Bright in The Sexual State of the Union

There.  Let's go create.

By the way, if you're interested in hearing audio recordings of Anais Nin reading and speaking, visit this site for wonderful downloads.  (Honestly, pages like this are true gems.  Thanks so much to the creators).

Comments

[KL Pereira]

Lovely post, Sue!

Ta,
KL xx

[Sue]

So glad you liked it, KL! And thanks again for the wonderful Rilke. Love your new blog, by the way. xo