Everyone should create art—something they do just for the sake of doing it.
Because we see more beauty in the world when we create beautiful things.
Because it teaches us to be more present.
And because the playing, the writing, the painting, the dancing, the building of a business that lights your soul on fire is the point of life.
It's what we're here to do.
Mo beauty
In my personal life, everything has become fodder for my Soul Searching trips, this newsletter, and my music.
The more I tap into my creativity, the more I feel I have.
I find beauty and inspiration in places that I used to ignore or rush through: An interaction with a barista, a feeling of envy, or my son shitting on the floor and then wiping it all over the carpets and walls.
In his recent episode on the Joe Rogan podcast, legendary producer Rick Rubin said, “The way you move through the world is what makes you the artist that you are."
He goes on to say that creativity is a way of being.
Learning to treat my life as a work of art has made me more present and has filled me with a sense of peace and joy more consistently than I've ever experienced in my life.
Practice for the real thing
Michael Singer, author of the The Untethered Soul, says that meditation is only practice for the real thing: life. He says that learning to let go of his "stuff" (negative thought patterns, stories, beliefs, etc.) on the cushion helps him do it when it really matters.
Creating art can teach us to bring this same level of presence into the rest of our lives.
If I can allow myself to become completely absorbed in playing music, then maybe I can learn to become completely absorbed in conversation that I would otherwise be distracted in. Maybe I can become absorbed in feeding my son breakfast. Or taking a walk. Or cutting the grass.
Playing is the point
On the most recent Soul Searching Adventure in the White Mountains in NH, I gave the men an exercise to create a song, rap or poem.
One of the participants (who gave me permission to share a bit of his story) discovered his creativity for the first time. He had literally told himself before this that he just didn't have any creativity. On this trip everyone explored very deep, and often vulnerable aspects of their lives. This man said that unearthing the artist within was the most profound part of the adventure for him.
What could possibly be so moving about writing a poem?
In this song, Alan Watts says about playing music: "You will simply become completely absorbed in sound. And therefore you will find yourself living in an eternal now. In which there is no past, and there is no future... It brings us into a state of peace where we understand that the point of life is simply here and now. The journey itself is the point. The playing itself is the point.”
In writing that poem, this man had tapped into the whole "point" of life in a way he never had before. And in doing so he found the wellspring of creativity that resides in all of us.
A few more things I want to share with you
🐒 A fascinating alternative theory of the history and rise of humanity
💸 Why Dale Carnegie thought you should aim to die broke
💻 If you haven’t already tried them, AI tools that write freakishly well and create art (like the image above).
Peace,
Michael