Create or Perish

I don’t remember if in my 20’s and 30’s I struggled as much with meaning in my life as I do now. Maybe not even in my 40’s. There’s something about the moment when your kids are grown, and they no longer need you in the way they once did, that makes you wonder: has my life been relevant; am I relevant? It may or may not have anything to do with being a parent. For me, these questions intensified as my children matured. But many of us —parents or not— arrive at a time in life when we wonder if it all meant something.

If you’ve generally traveled along a smooth trajectory, maybe you do not ask these questions (though I suspect they may arise for you too someday with surprising intensity). My own life happened in fits and starts: I failed at least as much as I’ve succeeded, I lived the majority of my life thinking that I still had plenty of it left to compose it into some kind of coherent whole. But now when I look at all the pieces scattered like so many objects in a cluttered house, I wonder: can all this be cleaned up? And —if I do— will there be anything left?

Since we’re all unique, we have a solemn duty to come to the table of life bearing our most special offering, made with the unique blend of ingredients that each of us cooks up according to his or her own secret recipe. Whether or not we are artists by profession, we are all artists, authors, creators of our own destiny, and on our path toward that destiny, we want to forge a life worth living. But when I look back on my life, I see that it has been remarkably average and yet strangely exhausting.

So, how do we pick up the trail of debris left in our own wake and sift through to see which pieces are worth keeping? Can you tidy your life, the way Marie Kondo tidies spaces, by holding pieces of it to your heart and see if they spark joy? As I look at the pieces around me and examine them closely, they spark not joy, but a searing sensation that is somewhere at the crossroads of feeling infinitely interconnected and unbearably alone.

As much as I often crave spare and pristine spaces, and look wistfully at organized and minimal lives, I also wonder if the only way to get to some kind of core of meaning is to relentlessly prune. We’ve been told that if we peel away the unessential, we’ll be left with a luminous pearl of meaning. But what if you prune and prune, and fail to find the pearl? What if the oyster was the meaning?

As appealing as “less” is, it may not be the only, or the most appropriate way. You can look back at your life and see a mess, for which you have to forgive yourself. Or, you can look around at all those pieces you’ve dropped on the side of the road you’ve traveled, and let your past amaze you. Each of the pieces may be a meaningless fragment of clutter on its own, but in the flow of your life, it takes on significance as a stepping stone on your way to becoming who you are today.

What if, instead of always looking to pare, clean, downsize, and in general fit some kind of “desirable” cultural template, we look at the whole messy history that is us, and use that as material to weave our own complex tapestry; without worrying about its symmetry or patterns, but allowing its rhythm to reveal itself in the weaving.

Steven Pressfield is usually recognized as someone who identified resistance as a force we encounter and must overcome in any creative undertaking. That resistance exists seems absolutely indisputable to anyone who’s ever faced a clean sheet of paper, an empty canvas or a blank computer screen. We’ve all felt its power over us, we’ve all felt the irrepressible urge to complete odious menial tasks rather than come face to face with our own creativity.

But there may be an even more insidious form of resistance, one that as adults we’ve become so good at fighting, that we barely even notice it’s there. What if all our lives, since the very first responsibilities we took on as adults, we’ve been overcoming the resistance of our real nature, of our true inclinations? And this is why, when we find ourselves at some later fork in the road, we’re not sure how exactly we got here, but we’re worn out by the journey. It’s not that we resist creativity, we’ve forgotten how to wield it.

In this scenario, our submission to Pressfield’s resistance is not lack of willpower but simply a desire to rest our brains and to find respite in whatever it is that resistance offers. Why —we may ask— should we, at this stage in our lives, feel restless? Why the constant need to accomplish more? What if all we ever were was this, why would this not be enough?

It may never be. We are each of us special enough to have been born, to be living and breathing and thinking and feeling as a human being. And we are wired to want to do something with that gift; we’re wired to have meaning and to create meaning.

So let’s create. Create every day, create with every breath we have. Let’s be brave and tireless, and create lives filled with Love, Courage, Wonder and Grace.