“Every time you confront something painful, you are at a potentially important juncture in your life—you have the opportunity to choose healthy and painful truth or unhealthy but comfortable delusion.”
– Ray Dalio, Principles: Life and Work
__________
“It was the monotony and sterility of the other outlets which drove me to desperation. I demanded a realm in which I should be both master and slave at the same time: the world of art is the only such realm. I entered it without any apparent talent, a thorough novice, incapable, awkward, tongue-tied, almost paralyzed by fear and apprehensiveness. I had to lay one brick on another, set millions of words to paper before writing one real, authentic word dragged up from my own guts… I had to throw myself into the current, knowing that I would probably sink.”
– Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart
__________
I get up and write.
I join that community of strangers heeding the call.
We who have been hypnotized by the same unnameful force that caused us to turn away from the world and cast our gaze downward onto the page, inward upon ourselves.
I imagine that I pull out my guts onto the page, in a practice of visceral honesty. In fact, they are merely the brightly coloured handkerchiefs of the amateur magician.
It’s a trick, an illusion, mere self-entertainment, soon to be forgotten when the next demand of real life comes by.
The page is my mirror in front of which I practice and perfect my simple tricks.
I’m not going to fool anyone except, perhaps, myself.
I keep at it though.
What’s next? There’s only so much an amateur can do on his own.
What is a magic trick without an audience? Only they can tell if it has been successful or not.
Are these words, intended to create a happy illusion for others, simply an exercise in self delusion?
What compels me?
Can I be truly honest with myself and say that I stare not into the mirror, but through it at an imaginary audience?
Do I dream of that stage whilst scribbling in the dark?
Am I laying a true foundation for something real?
Do I even know what success or failure looks like?
Isn’t the act of creation enough without embellishing it with expectations and definitions?
Only time will tell.
Conversations With Quotations 