thoughts, words, deeds

the relationship between creation and discovery

Life is about creating yourself, not finding yourself. Do you agree?

Okay. Here’s another difficult one. I mean, life is complicated. I guess my answer has to be no, because in my point of view, creation and discovery are not mutually exclusive.

What I mean is this. Life happens. In the process, we grow and develop as people. We are continually adding layers of self that make us into a new version of ourselves—hopefully a better one. Sometimes we peel layers away as the creative process continues. Like a ceramicist working with clay, we add and subtract, leave for a while, come back, put it in the oven, bake it until it’s strong enough to bear the glaze. Sometimes it’s knocked about, and some things happen to the form that we’re becoming that we can only react to. After all, we don’t choose to go blind or lose a child or contract diabetes. But what we make of that, whether we are smashed and have to rebuild with superglue and duct tape or whether we work through the pain . . . there is creation happening at all times.

However, we don’t necessarily know the end result until we discover it within ourselves. Here we are, making ourselves and we think we’re making a simple life involving a lot of reading and writing and then suddenly, without knowing how it happens, we look at ourselves and realize there is something unexpected. There’s a talent there or an accomplishment or a beauty or a disharmony that we didn’t know we had or didn’t know we were making. Life is occasionally being surprised about who we are and what we can do.

Sometimes, we don’t know who we’ve made of ourselves until we are placed in a pressure situation and then we find that we are . . . well, what are we? Are we the hero or the rogue plot element or the villain or the miracle? Living means that sometimes we surprise ourselves. I live. Therefore I create myself continually, pausing as I pass through particularly life filled moments so that I can find who I am, again.