8 – Go Forth!
CORE QUESTION
Do you believe you can change the future?
CORE PRACTICE
Develop the awareness to know when you need to exit the cave and when you need to reenter it.
HIP-HIP-HOORAY!
Whether it took you eight weeks to get here or eight months, it matters not. You’ve persevered to the end.
But of course, this is not the “end.” The work of becoming a better artist through the work of becoming a better human is a lifelong act. The purpose of this course, and this last module in particular, is to act as a springboard, bouncing you into the rest of your life.
I trust you’ll come back to the material from time to time, and this community when you need to (we’ll be waiting for you!), but for now let’s get on with it!
COME OUT OF THE CAVE
Photo Credit: Alfredo Alvarez (Creative Commons)
Of all the things I learned in my K-12 education, I really only remember one of them.
I was a junior at Blaine High School in Blaine, Minnesota. Yep, that’s right. Blaine, who lived in Blaine, who went to Blaine.
Long story short, I was born on the frozen tundra of Fargo, North Dakota, and we moved to Blaine because of a cheaper house when I was 6. No real thought went into it as I recall, though it did have its consequences.
For example: want to give a ‘gifted and talented’ kid with a codependent and over-esteeming mom an even bigger complex? Move him to a low-income suburb and high school with his name on it.
In hindsight, a conversation about the meaning of a name was probably warranted.
I digress.
During my junior year I took a required humanities class. It absolutely captured me.
It had myths and stories, and while everything we learned was decidedly made up, it all seemed to make a kind of deep sense to me. It was as if the Greeks really understood what a pale, bony kid with freckles and a bowl cut from the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes was going through.
The class arrested me so completely that I can’t even recall my teacher’s name.
In fact, I only remember the stories, and like I said, I really one remember one: Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. It changed me forever.
The story, in brief, goes like this:
In a cave sat a tribe of people, chained, facing a wall.
Behind them was a large fire, which had been burning since forever.
Between the fire and the detainees was a walkway, and every so often someone would walk back and forth across the path holding an object like a chair or a tree that had been cut down, casting a shadow of the image on the wall for all to see.
Instead of the tribe being able to see the actual object, they were only given the facsimile.
To the prisoners, the shadow was their reality.
Eventually, one man realized that the chains around his hands and feet weren’t actually fastened to anything at all.
He felt restless and uneasy. Something wasn’t right. He turned to look at the fire, letting his eyes adjust.
He could just make out the walkway, the objects, and the roaring fire.
What have I been looking at all this time?, he muttered to himself.
Then, just beyond the fire, he noticed something else: a tiny white dot, no bigger than the space between the flailing, flapping, upward licks of the enormous fire.
With a deep breath, he began the perilous journey towards the light, every refining step becoming more and more painful as his eyes struggled against the burning, white-hot brilliance.
Eventually he made his way out of the cave.
Dirtied from his treacherous journey, his eyes still searing, they slowly adjusted one final time, and he saw reality for what it was.
He saw a real chair and a real tree.
Now, the ultimate twist in the story is that instead of running as far from the cave as he could to a new life filled with hope, freedom, and truth, he returned.
Back into the darkness he went, calling the tribe to a better future.
“There is more,” he tells them. “So much more.”
This is probably the most accurate metaphor I can think of to depict the journey I hope this course has invited you to take. In fact, I’d love for you to take a moment and read the actual excerpt of this story from Plato’s Republic here.
Go ahead. We’ll wait.
The act of becoming a better human is really about becoming more aware: seeing the shadows for what they are and then making the slow and painful trek into the light. The act of art making, however, is what happens at the very end of the story when he ventures back into the cave.
We go out to become better humans, and we re-enter the cave to make better art.
I’ll continue to refer back to this metaphor as we soldier on in this final module. For the next little bit, though, I want to walk you through some of the highlights of the last seven modules so that you leave with the most important things top of mind.
Our 3.5-year-old, Ruby, loves the movie Brave. The movie’s fiery heroine has served as a noble inspiration in our house. While we don’t have many weapons in our home of three girls plus me, it hasn’t taken long for Ruby to fashion what she calls a “shooter” out of a couple of Swiffer duster handles. She uses crayons (and anything else that looks pointy) as pretend arrows, which she lobs into the air while holding tightly to the duster. What she lacks in execution, she makes up for with gusto.
By the end of this module, I want you to have a quiver full of makeshift arrows and a “shooter” ready to aim at the life you have ahead of you.
Whether you’re an atheist, a vegan, a Christian, a gamer, or anything else, what you believe shapes everything you do. In developing your creed, you should have started to see the roots of your belief system and how it has played into your story, and in how you do what you do.
Let’s fly up a few thousand feet and travel a few weeks back in time.
Remember when I first asked you to start thinking about your creed? For some of you, it came quickly and immediately; for others, the words sputtered slowly. In whatever way your creed has developed, it is of utmost importance that before you leave this course, you leave with a phrase that gets you out of bed – a creed that excites you.
TIME OUT
Once again, rewrite your creed at the top of the page. How does it feel to see it in black and white? Does it still apply? Does it move you still? If so, take a moment and write it / print it out and post it somewhere you can see it. Maybe make it your desktop wallpaper.
If it doesn’t fit, why do you think that is? Still need help? Email me!
In Module Two we read through the story of the Woodcarver, one of my all-time favorites. I’ve reposted it below to give you a refresher. Please take a few moments to reread it.
“Khing, the master carver, made a bell stand Of precious wood.
When it was finished, All who saw it were astounded.
They said it must be the work of spirits.
The Prince of Lai said to the master carver “What is your secret?”
Khing replied, “I am only a workman: I have no secret.
There is only this:
When I began to think about the work you commanded I guarded my spirit, did not expend it on trifles, that were not to the point.
I fasted in order to set
My heart at rest.
After three days fasting, I had forgotten praise or criticism.
After seven days I had forgotten my body
With all its limbs.
By this time all thought of your Highness
And of the court had faded away.
All that might distract me from the work
Had vanished.
I was collected in the single thought
Of the bell-stand.
Then I went to the forest
To see the trees in their own natural state.
When the right tree appeared before my eyes,
The bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt.
All I had to do was to put forth my hand
And begin.
If I had not met this particular tree
There would have been
No bell stand at all.
My own collected thoughts
Encountered the hidden potential in the wood:
From this live encounter came the work
Which you ascribe to the spirits.”
My wife is one of the most amazing writers I know. But most people don’t know it. As a freelance writer, she doesn’t write for herself most of the time, and so her words get spoken by someone else. Instead of telling her own stories, more often than not she gets paid by telling someone else’s. This isn’t a critique, but more of a reality.
Most of us aren’t telling our own stories, in fact.
No. We tell stories as dictated to us by our boss, our organization, our company, the products we are in charge of selling, and the like. Again, this isn’t a critique, but rather a reality for most of us. Most of us aren’t in jobs where we get to write the narrative. There are some lovely advantages to this and some obvious pitfalls. If we tell other people’s stories for too long without developing our own, we can get lost in the shuffle.
And if we get too lost, it then gets harder and harder to figure out the unique work and story we are to tell with our one and only life. The great thing is, we might not all need to quit our jobs to figure out what moves us, or to tell our own stories (however, it may be that that is exactly what you need to do – more on that in a bit). What’s so great about the example from the Woodcarver is the way in which he uses his actual job to create something that moves him.
- First, he knows what moves him: carving wood. Then, he removes distractions: the voice of the critic and other unhelpful voices; he also turns off his phone and email and other technology by going out into the woods. Next, he’s aware of his surroundings: he knows exactly what tree to carve just by looking. Finally, he makes: without a full plan, he begins.
This is a rather helpful format:
- Figure out what moves you. Remove unhelpful voices and distractions.Be aware of your surroundings. You’re where you are for a reason. Look up and be reminded.Begin. At some point you must start typing, painting, speaking, singing. It’s scary, of course, but you simply must start at some point.
As we discussed, you may need some practice doing this outside of your everyday environment before you’ll be as skilled as the Woodcarver. This is why side projects are so very helpful: because they let you practice the steps above without a terrible number of consequences. Again, if you want to make better art, you must figure out what moves you first.
A quick note about whether or not you need to leave your place of employment in order to be human, to be yourself, to tell your own stories, to make your own art: The thing you must discern is whether you are where you are to transform the organization, or for you yourself to be transformed. In truth, both should happen, with the primary focus being on how you can be transformed from within, by virtue of being where you are.
Here is a story I shared in UNTITLED to help illustrate this point:
A few months after the breakdown concerning the stage adaptation, I started to repeat the following phrase: “I think I’ve lost my ability to contemplate.”
Melodramatic as it may seem, I believed it to be true until a friend pointed out that I hadn’t really lost anything at all.
Saying you’ve “lost” something of who you are as a result of your environment releases you from having to take responsibility for something you stopped doing. You let yourself off the hook and made it about them. And then we start saying things like: They should change, not me! They’re the ones who created this crazy place, not me! (Insert your organization here) is where artists/innovators/entrepreneurs/super smart people go to die!
Whenever you join something, you want to fit in. At least I do. But when that “fitting in” means you become less of who you really are, you’ll eventually find yourself doing some pretty sideways things. At least I did.
When you don’t bring your full self, you’re not only hurting your organization, you’re hurting yourself. And when you don’t take responsibility for yourself, you’re missing out on a pretty amazing opportunity to grow.
Take a moment to consider the following: What are those things you’ve been saying you’ve “lost”? Your life as an artist? Your creativity? Your hope?
Are they more about your organization, or are they more about you?
Perhaps more pointedly: Have you dismissed these parts of yourself because of fear? Are you not being your full self because you’re scared of what might happen? Have you found yourself blaming your employer or client for not allowing you to be you?
Instead of blaming someone else for preventing you from being who you really are, why not start showing up and see what happens? You might get fired or something even better.
Perhaps you might finally let your organization be what it should be – a laboratory for your transformation, not theirs.
This is why self-awareness is the absolute key to everything. As you discover what lab you’re in – for you or the organization or some combination of both – you’ll need to then discern if and when it’s time for you to move on to a place or space where you can continue to grow. If you’re not growing, you’re dying.
TIME OUT
How have you become more aware of what moves you?
Once, I was asked the following question during a Q&A with a creative team:
“Does it ever get any easier? Any less complicated?”
I paused for a moment, hoping the slight delay would cue a zinger to pop into my brain, out of my mouth, and then onto the gentleman’s notepad. A zinger for the ages. A zinger that would solve all of the world’s creative woes. “No,” I replied. “It doesn’t get any easier. As you get better at making things and becoming a better a human, things may become less complicated. But they don’t ever get easier. And oh,” I added, “making things will always be scary.” This shouldn’t be a surprise. In fact, the sooner you come to terms with this, the better off you’ll be. After the Fall, we’re told that a curse was placed on these first people and that they would toil – with the land and in labor. What this meant for them and means for us is this all-important fact:
The ground is cursed.
The act of making anything – but most especially anything of beauty – is attempted in soil not suited for growth. It’s cursed. And yet, on the very next page of the story, we are called to make. It’s a mandate, in fact. So what are we to do? How do we make beauty in a world that doesn’t always feel conducive? The only way to get better is to keep at it. The grindstone is there waiting for you, but you must show up. You must sit down in your chair (knees or buns) AND you must scratch even when you don’t itch.
In 2009, Ira Glass, the creator of the uber-popular NPR radio show This American Life, did a 4-part interview on the art of storytelling. Cut from copious amounts of wisdom, a few nuggets have been translated into beautiful posters and the video I’ll show you below.
In it he talks about the gap – the gap between our taste and our skill. We know that something should be good. We can see it, we can taste it, but for a very long time our skill just isn’t up to par. Most people quit before their skill catches up, but what I hope The Grindstone has taught you is that if you can show up in your chair (knees or buns) and if you can scratch when you don’t itch, if you can discipline yourself into being aware, eventually the gap will become less and less.
In Module Four, we got into the finer details of the creative process. We talked about making space, figuring out what story we want to tell, and what ingredients make up the very best ideas. These four words…
Personal
Specific
Moving
Honest
…drive everything I do, and I hope they begin to take over the wheel in your life as well.
Imagine a world where the things you made were personal: they actually came from some part of your own story; where the things you made were specific: instead of speaking in generalities, you took the risk to say something potent and clear; where the things you made were moving: by taking the time to discover what moves you, your work suddenly became moving to the rest of the world; where the things you made were honest: I’m not saying you’re a liar, but could your work use more authenticity?
This world I’m talking about is a world where WE all make better.
A PORTFOLIO, NOT PROJECTS
Time and time again, I’m asked what to do when a project doesn’t go the way I wanted or I wasn’t able to make it personal, specific, moving, or honest.
What about when the thing just doesn’t work? Don’t you want to crawl into a hole? Don’t you just want to die?
Of course! But I only allow myself to feel this for a short while because…
I don’t make projects; I’m making a portfolio.
When I was acting, I barely held a job for more than six months. By that I mean, every show closed. Eventually the run ended and I had to move on to the next project.
For a very long while, this is how I thought of my life. Project, after project, after project.
This wasn’t an issue until a project went a way I hadn’t planned. Even when I started working full time as a creative director, the “project mentality” began to sinks its claws into me whenever a certain idea or project was canned, canceled, severely critiqued, or just flat-out didn’t work. I’d sink into a hole for a few days, and then it would take another few days to find my way out.
But I have found that a simple change in the way I frame my work helps me keep my head up and my legs moving. If I can look at my work more like I’m filling a portfolio rather than doing a series of projects, one after another, I can keep a better perspective and not live and die by the immediate.
You see, I’m NOT creating projects; I’m filling a portfolio with work that includes the things I make for work, yes, but also the things I’m making in my life: children, dinners, our home, deep relationships with my friends and family.
I could go on and on, but I hope you understand what I’m getting at here. The refining process of becoming a better human means starting to look at your projects as just tiny scraps that get filed away in a much grander folio called ‘your life.’
And the ONLY way to begin seeing things this way is if you drench yourself in grace. You will show up in your chair (knees or buns), and still what you make might be awful. You will make something that to you is personal, specific, moving, and honest, only to be told that the client isn’t interested. What you make will often suck, but if you wade in a pool of grace and don’t just rely on your gifts or on grit, you’ll find that building a portfolio is rather fun, almost regardless of the individual contents.
Drench yourself in grace, open up a portfolio, and start filling it with what really matters.
TIME OUT
Take a moment and make a list of the things already in your life portfolio. Where are you a little thin? Where have you had more practice? How does this help you think about what you are working on now?
In Module Five, we discussed the power of thinking about mysteries to be uncovered rather than problems to be solved. I know you’ve been reading a lot so far in Module Eight, so let’s take a breather together.
Remember this incredible song I shared with you, O Magnum Mysterium? I’d like for you to take another listen.
That’s right. Stop what you’re doing and take 7 minutes and enjoy this amazing piece.
The lyrics tell the story of Christmas and the virgin birth
O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the new-born Lord,
lying in a manger!
Blessed is the Virgin whose womb
was worthy to bear
Christ the Lord.
Alleluia!
As I write this, I’m just about to begin rehearsals for our Christmas Eve services. Nearly every time I sit down to think about this story, I can hardly believe it. It’s literally crazy!
A young girl is visited by an angel and told she will become pregnant with a baby that will save the world. When her soon-to-be husband is left with what can only look like a scandal, he decides he’s going to quietly break the engagement. But, before he can follow through with his plans, he falls asleep and is ALSO visited by an angel who tells him that Mary is telling the truth.
WHAT!?
You know the rest…they travel to Bethlehem and have their baby in a cave with a bunch of poop and animals.
This story is CRAZY, and yet if you’re a Christian, it is core to your beliefs…your creed, if you will. Nearly every faith has crazy stories at its core, and no matter what you believe, it is this very capacity to believe that makes you human.
Animals don’t believe. Robots don’t believe. Tools don’t believe. Only humans do.
And you, my friend, are a human.
TIME OUT
Does your creed help remind you of your guts & tears & and heart-thumping humanity? Make sure it does, because you will slowly start to become what you believe. Whether you believe you are merely a tool or you believe you are a wild maker with work to do, don’t be surprised when that’s what you become. Choose wisely!
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
Module Six is one of my absolute favorite modules, if only because I got to interview my good friend Shauna Niequist. She’s been helping me learn more about the Enneagram (and myself) for the last five years. The Enneagram has single-handedly become my go-to personality profile, and has without a doubt changed my entire life.
I write this to encourage you to once again take a look at our conversation and start to discern your number by reading Riso and Hudson’s Wisdom of the Enneagram and by getting the daily Ennea-thoughts from the Enneagram Institute.
At its core, Module Six is about self-awareness.
I spent years running from the pain of my past, and in so doing running away from myself. Luckily it didn’t take as long as I ran away to begin to rediscover who I am and who I was created to be. But, as you read in Module Seven, I almost didn’t make it.
If you want to make great art, art that moves people to their core, art that turns people inward, then you must first do the work you’re asking them to do. To restate the words of my mentor, Dan Allender:
“You cannot take anyone farther than you’ve gone yourself.”
Find a therapist if you don’t have one, seek out a spiritual director, get alone and then get with community, ask people to tell you what they see in you and ask yourself what you see inside. These are the must-do’s if you are to become aware of yourself.
“Live the questions” is not a suggestion!
In Module Seven, I told you my story.
I thought a lot about starting Make Better with this content, but instead decided I’d give us a chance to get to know one another a little first before spilling all my guts. I’m an over-sharer by nature, so it took a lot for me to put my story at the end of our time together. By putting my story last, I wanted to give you a tangible example of the time structure that we laid out earlier:
We must take the darkness of our past, imagine a different future, and then, as a result of seeing this new future, we must live differently today.
RADICAL IMAGINATION
If we want to become better humans, we must see the future through eyes that are stunningly different from those the rest of the world peers through. We look “through a glass darkly,” as the scripture says, and yet this is not how we were created to see. Not dissimilar to the man forced to look at the shadows in the cave, we have been taught to see things a certain way.
But if we are to create art that changes people from the inside out, and if we are to become artists who are the best versions of themselves, then we must see the future as the prophets do, with something my wife calls radical imagination. A number of years ago, I stepped out of my office for a meeting. When I returned some time later, I found that my wife, Margaret, had visited, leaving behind a Starbucks cup and the following note on my whiteboard:
It was a random note – a flash of brilliance that hits her all too often. Mostly this brilliance finds its way onto a page in some notebook or onto her computer in some file, but today, I was the beneficiary of her genius. This concept of radical imagination is the entire key to becoming a better human and making better art. It is how the old becomes new. It is how the past is remade. It is truly how we make better everything.
When we’re chained, staring at the shadows, there is no future, nothing to imagine. There is only past: what you just saw; and present: what you see right now. This is the way things are, and that is simply that. But when the man stands and begins to see that his chains aren’t even fastened, everything changes. Studying this allegory for over 15 years now, I’ve always been fascinated by that moment.
What prompted the man to stand up? Why, after all these years, was he compelled to wonder if there was anything behind him at all?
Some people hit rock bottom; for others, it is a tragedy of one kind or another that shocks them into reality. I’ve had friends who come to this place of awareness through the death of a child or a parent, or the loss of a job or relationship, or a mental breakdown from stress at work. More often than not, it is in the midst of grief that we ask if this is all there is? Certainly there must be more!
If you look at the dialogue Plato creates between Socrates and the sojourner Glaucon, you see that Socrates is acting as the man’s guide. If you remember in my interview with Donald Miller, every good story has a guide, and it is my hope that the Make Better Community and I can continue to act as your guide.
But first, you must stand up.
Whether you’re in the midst of grief at this very moment or whether there is something simply gnawing at your gut telling you that there must be more to this life, I beg of you to stand up.
Stand up and look around.
As Socrates tells his apprentice, this first gaze around the cave will be painful:
“At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision, -what will be his reply?”
Light is painful and the ground is cursed – these are realities you must never forget. And yet, you must keep pushing through the cave and toiling in the dirt. Truth and beauty come about no other way. At the very end of the allegory, Socrates sums up Glaucon’s journey like this:
This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the previous argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed whether rightly or wrongly God knows.
But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally, either in public or private life must have his eye fixed.
It is the goal of the artist to take what they’ve learned from their story, along with the humility they’ve gained from the blinding light of self-awareness, and reenter the cave to help those still chained to the wall imagine a new future.
Great art says, “what if?” Great art is prophetic and filled with radical imagination. Great humans are artists who imagine new futures. Great humans are artists who believe that truly great art is a life well lived.
I had the chance to travel to Israel and Palestine in 2014, and was overcome by a whole host of things. The most incredible, though, was the sense of resilience, hope, and imagination, especially from those who had been oppressed.
After a few days of being home, I stumbled across this article from an American woman who had lived in Jordan for a number of years with her family, but had decided with a heavy heart that they must move to someplace more stable. Her words are a fitting way for us to end our time together. She writes with potency about the fact that, in a world filled with instability of all sorts, it is the better artists and better humans who must help us see into a new future.
Creativity, as I’ve said before, is not a noun – it is not a thing – it is a verb – it is action; it is a way of thinking differently.
You must do this with your own hearts as you move out of the cave, and then you must call back into the darkness for the rest of the tribe to follow.
“Now, in the places where stability has been given over to relentless violence, the poets, artists, and even cartoonists are more necessary than ever, and their tasks just as dangerous. It has grown hard to see a hopeful future when so many have suffered trauma, dislocation, and death. It is hard to see now what the future holds but more suffering and grief.”
Ibsen once said that the task of the poet is “to see, but mark well,” and with that in mind, it is not surprising that so much of biblical prophecy is poetry – both bracingly realistic about life and its hard elements, and stunningly truthful about God’s holy presence among us and our individual and collective unrighteousness. The prophets listened to God, wrote what God allowed them to see, and pointed to him, urging God’s people to see along with them. They beseeched the people to see the world and their participation in it with God’s eyes. These tasks continue to be those of a poet and a prophet: to see God’s word at work in the world and invite others to see too.
Kate Harris said it well:
“The poet is one who toils and works and feels and sorts through all manner of things seen and unseen and then welcomes others in, beckons them, calls to them, ‘Come and see what I can see!’ … The poet is one who gives us new eyes to see, who helps us make sense of what we experience, and who invites others to see more deeply into what it is that their experiences mean.” Her essay invites all to engage in that kind of poetic seeing, to recognize it as a common human task that we do both for ourselves, for our neighbors, and for our nations.”
As we write our stories, rewrite and rework our creeds, discover what moves us, embrace the cursed ground and the grace that comes with it, and imagine better futures, we must not be content with simply making better art or even becoming better humans. Better is just the beginning. Being a better human is about living an alternative existence. Better humans don’t tell the future; they make it.
GO FORTH!
And now, grace and courage as you continue to practice. You are part of the Make Better Community. You are not alone.
As a final act of commitment to making better, please download this beautiful piece for you to print out and put in a place you’ll see every day to remind you that you are part of a group of hundreds of other makers who believe that to become better artists, we must become better humans.
In the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing with you additional ways we will stay connected as a community, but for now, head over to the Facebook group and tell us how it feels to be done!
Once again, it has been a pleasure serving you and being your guide. If there’s anything I can do for you, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Very Warmly,
