Throughout my life, I have defaulted to controlling various aspects of my life to feel safe. Letting go does not come easy for me, even though I realize how beneficial it will be for my mental health. Before sitting down and writing this post, I felt very defeated about my art. It is easy to get caught up in looking for “results” if I am deeply aware of my efforts and the hours I spend creating, marketing, writing, recording video, audio, and brainstorming.
I put “results” in quotation marks, because what are “results” anyway? Are they social media likes? Comments? Sales? Souls awakened? Lives changed? How can “results” for something as subjective as art even be measured? Even though I understand this cognitively, when I put myself out there as an artist, sharing my most vulnerable self with the world, it can feel like a personal rejection if many people do not recognize it.
After wallowing in self-pity for a short while, I decided to do an experiment and spent some time meditating and reflecting on a random passage in the Tao Te Ching (English translation by Stephen Mitchell). It was uncanny how applicable these couple of sentences were to my situation:
“Things arise, and she lets them come; things disappear, and she lets them go. She has, but doesn’t possess, acts but doesn’t expect. When her work is done, she forgets it. That is why it lasts forever.”
After reading this, I realized “results” were not my goal. My goal is to write this message because it flows from within me. My goal is to create using my subconscious imagination and my hands. My goal is to feel the art and create poetry as a response. My goal is to share it in vulnerability. Then, my work is done. My art will always be a part of me, but I don’t possess it. I can’t capture it and hold on to it. As soon as it leaves my hands, I need to step out of the way and let the art breathe. Give it space, forget it, let it go.
The part about “forgetting it, so it will last forever” perplexed me. My only conclusion is that if we hold on to our work, we keep it in a cage. Trapped in our mind, trapped in our bodies, holding on to the meaning and possessing it. If this happens, when we die, it dies with us. It would be limited to one lifetime. If we forget it, we release it from the limitations of a single human and deliver it to the greater consciousness. There, it won’t be caged and trapped. There, it can go forth and have a life of its own, spreading where it wants and speaking to whom it wants. In that way, it will last forever.
What do you think?
