A friend wrote to me today about a profound moment she’s reached in her life. The stability she refers to emotional, spiritual stability, the place she can stand so that she can live more purposefully. She says, “I am focused on finding stability. I’m amazed I’ve focused on “finding” it rather than “developing” it. I’ve been trying to purchase it with promises rather than lay it down brick by brick….”
Success, however you define it, rarely happens overnight. It is not achieved through gimmicks or hot new ideas or trying something new for a few days or months. It’s not finding the perfect product to make, or the great new gallery or the really perfect show. It can be all of those things, but it’s more, too. IF you are in this for the long haul.
Success comes from the sustained effort, the daily steps, the body of work developed, the accumulation of much dedication and focus. And an enduring belief in yourself.
Because it gets hard. There can be months with no sales, no positive feedback, no reinforcement, no “sign from the universe” that you are indeed on the right track. Sometimes all you have is the memory of what it felt like to know you were doing the right thing.
Even Mother Theresa only heard God once in her life. She heard him clearly tell her she was to go into the very streets of the city to find the poor, and care for them. In a recent biography, it’s revealed that she suffered great depression later in life, because she never heard from him again. She never really knew if she was on the right path, but could only hold on to that one revelation to guide her for the rest of her life. (Personally, I don’t think it would have killed God to have sent her a postcard once in awhile to say, “Good on you, kiddo”….) Also, God never told her she was to act for social change or do anything except CARE for the sick and dying. And so that’s exactly what she did.
Our belief in ourselves is exactly that, a belief system. Not always privy to the rules and regulations of “reality” or pragmatism or any other measure. It simply IS. And we have to commit to that fantastic belief—that the art, the creative work we do MATTERS—every day. Every day.
We have to believe that what is in us needs to exist in the world, or we wouldn’t be here. Whether it’s a single note or an entire solo aria in the opus of the universe, it is only ours to sing. No one else gets our part if we don't show up. When that part of the song is lost, it is lost forever.
We must show up, every day, for our role.
But wishing won’t make that happen. Resolutions and promises won’t bring that into being. It comes in the doing. It is brought into the world a step at a time, piece by piece, inch by inch, by a commitment to daily effort.
Even when we cannot point to the impact we have, cannot see it, cannot measure it, we have to believe it is there. Made possible by the tiny commitment to ourselves each day, that who we are matters. That what we do matters. That the art we make matters.
No whining. Go make something.
