Creative Rebellion Essays: what can go right?
Embracing discomfort
We are geared towards risk-aversion by nature. Our DNA was passed on to those who survived and these ancestors of ours stuck around conceivably because they didn’t take unnecessary risks. Most likely your great to the nth grandfather or grandmother wasn’t the first one to try eating an unknown mushroom or vegetable but they benefited from the lessons taken by the ones who were less risk-averse.
But there is a difference between risk and recklessness. Calculated risk can give birth to something extraordinary, whether its a startup or a new way of making music or dance. Anything truly original is, at first, often considered ugly or crazy, until it becomes the norm. Recklessness, on the other hand, involves a lack of regard for danger and rarely ends well.
Constructive risk is expansive, has energy, and allows you to consider, What can go right? The opposite of this, is the constrictive, risk-averse, survival-focused mantra of What can go wrong? Risk assessment balances the two but I would propose that most of us tend to focus on what can go wrong over what could go right.
I think about this in regards to my own habits – how many things am I doing by rote? An additional factor is convenience and dislike of change. In general, it’s comfortable to do the same things, in the same way, every day. There’s consistency in that and a feeling of control. The problem is, whether it’s driving to work the same way (back when we drove to work) or refusing to entertain alternative points of view to our entrenched way of thinking in politics, religion, science or philosophy, we suppress the opportunity for change and growth. Mutations and aberrations in the well-trodden groove, whether it’s DNA or our daily routines, allow for evolution.
Also, if you keep doing the same things the same way all the time, it can become kind of boring.
Creativity requires courting change and therefore risk. As Austin Kleon wrote about in his wonderful book Steal Like an Artist, creativity is the unique combining of existing assets to make something new.
“I wanted to hear music that had not yet happened, by putting together things that suggested a new thing which did not yet exist.”
I find it’s easy to fall into a groove. Now there are some things you want to get into a habit of doing daily but these practices are really a platform for experimentation, mutation and therefore they can have elements of risk. For example, I meditate daily. This centers me and gives me a foundation for focus (admittedly a lower risk threshold). Or I write daily and this strengthens my capabilities but in order to not fall into a rut, I have to surprise myself and often expose myself through publishing and publicly speaking on subjects that are important to me. That is risk. Or I make art daily and it’s easy to create something I can do well over and over but it’s more exciting to do something that makes me a little nervous.
“Always go a little further into the water than you feel you are capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. When you don't feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you're just about in the right place to do something exciting.”
What I also learned is that you have to care in order to take risk. I wrote a previous draft for my weekly essay and I kind of “phoned it in.” My wife, who is my editor, read it and I knew it wasn’t going well from the expression on her face as she scrutinized it at the dining room table. She marked it up and said, “You’ve said much of this before. And, besides, it’s dark and we don’t need any more darkness right now.” Admittedly the first paragraph was about The Black Death (which killed around 75-200 million from 1347-1351) so she’s right. I was defaulting back into a well-worn existential perspective of “what could go wrong” rather than what can go right. So, I chucked that essay and now you are reading the new and improved version.
The previous essay didn’t work because it didn’t have heart. And in order to have heart, you have to be open. And in order to be truly open, you have to embrace risk.
Perhaps most importantly, I learned (yet again) that if I’m enjoying the process of creating, which can involve more often than not, struggle, then I’m not truly present with the work and it’s dead on the page. Or canvas. Or screen. In other words, I forgot to play with my work. And a sense of play is crucial to the creative mindset or the product you’re working on becomes dry and dull.
Ignoring what can go wrong is recklessness and I’m not advocating that. But just be aware of the downside, calculate whether you can bear it, and then embrace risk in how you go about your day. This can be as “risky” as taking an online course for learning a new language or a cooking class. Or it can be a change in your relationship with another person or your employment. Or it can be as risky as allowing yourself to dream enormously for a moment – about that dream job, about that place you want to live, about that person you want to be with. It’s amazing to me how many of us are constrictive in our own minds about what could go right. I’m talking about before we even take action, we tend to censor ourselves and downplay any possibilities that we could attain or even surpass the greatness and accomplishments we see in others.
“Do not feel lonely,
the entire universe is inside you.
Stop acting so small.
You are the universe in ecstatic motion.
Set your life on fire.
Seek those who fan your flames.”
Take some time today and write down some things that you aspire to. Then write down the first step you need to take to set that thing into motion. You’re just writing thoughts down.
And by doing this, you will make clear to yourself what can go right.
John
What I’m reading:
The Entrepreneur's Faces: How Makers, Visionaries and Outsiders Succeed – by Susanna Camp and Jonathan Littman. I know Susanna from back in my Wired/Hotwired days and I wrote an endorsement for this really wonderful book that breaks down the archetypes of entrepreneurs into categories they call “faces.” It’s a really engaging book, based on real-life entrepreneurs. Highly recommended.
What I’m watching:
My Octopus Teacher – I will never eat octopus sushi again. Or grilled or stewed Italian octopus. I was already moving away from eating most sentient things (an influence from my very vegan daughter) but after watching this touching documentary about a filmmaker who heals himself through a wonderful relationship with an octopus in a South African kelp forest, I learned how incredibly intelligent and emotional these animals are. And strikingly beautiful.
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