Suffer for Your Art

I think many of us grow up and learn that we must suffer through our work or art to be successful. It’s an adage of our modern economy. And what better way to keep workers working but to allow them to invalidate their own suffering? “You hurt? You’re supposed to. You’re tired? We are all tired, we are supposed to be.” But what if all that is wrong? What if in our fast paced modern post industrial tech economy we can allow for ourselves space to work as we should? What if you can get the same or even better results by slowing down and finding a flow with your work? I heard a mantra this past week that I really really love;

The River does not ask the ocean to rise to meet it, It simply flows.

There are plenty of meanings you can get from that but my first impression was that the striving to be like others, to compare and compete and seek validation from our peers and our family and friends is pointless. To cultivate within ourselves a sense of self worth and satisfaction with our own pace and validation with one’s self is a far better way to live.

I personally spent many many years trying to impress people around me who would never in a million years give me the words of validation i so desperately desired. It was when i rejected all that and dove head first into loving myself and my way of doing things, however messy, untimely, and seemingly inappropriate to some it may seem….its my way.

Why would it matter what someone else is thinking or how they perceive your progress or decline? Do you think it matters to them how you feel? It’s important to be an individual while its also important for us to exist as a community, a region, a country and a world. I believe if we can reject our current rugged individualism and begin working as a smaller group it may inspire us to accept each other however we show up. We awere never meant to go at it alone. Which I think is why so many of us fail when trying to do so.