Greetings from the great experiment!
Greetings from the great experiment!
It continues to prove to me that creativity and a chosen lifestyle on the path less traveled is the journey I am called to.
What do I mean by great experiment? Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. What does happiness actually mean? Is it a feeling or an emotion? We live in a world that is in the pursuit of what feels right therefore must be right. But have you ever been mistaken or failed? Humans are fallible and so are our feelings. This doesn’t mean our intuition isn’t a useful tool or our feelings are inadequate. Not at all. But if we only live life based on how we feel, would anything ever get done or be true? The chores, the hard work, the tasks that build the big picture? Because there are almost 9/10 times I absolutely do not feel like doing the thing. But it still must be done somehow whether it’s me or the next guy.
The great experiment in my life is the pursuit of vocational callings I may not yet be aware of. But if I continue to choose to follow the path that my feelings tell me to walk down today, my path may not be as prepared this time tomorrow. How do I know what is right and true and good? And how do you know? There must be an infallible truth. Not what I create and not what you create. We are ants! This universe and existence is beyond what we can fathom. Isn’t that amazing, I am relieved I don’t need to know everything. The world doesn’t revolve around me, thank God! When I fail, it doesn’t dissolve. When I win, it doesn’t rejoice.
However, when we are called by the creator of the universe to enter into a personal and genuine relationship with Him we are living our purpose. Yes, I believe in God. The life we were designed to live continues to move us to the whims of our free will. When we desire in our souls, the inner workings of our hearts and beings to be beyond ourselves, and what God has made for us - everything changes. Nothing I touch will be perfect. Nothing I say, do or breath will be either. I am no better than you or the people we pass by quickly on the street that make us weary, or the people we are in awe of on the internet. We are all broken and imperfect, but called to greatness. The liberty, which is the choice we have to make is to listen.
T.S. Eliot wrote,
What happens in continual surrender to himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. There remains to define this process of depersonalization and its relation to the sense of tradition. It is in this depersonalization that art may be said to approach the condition of science. I shall, therefore, invite you to consider, as a suggestive analogy, the action which takes place when a bit of finely dilated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide…. the mind of the mature poet [artist] differs from that of the immature one not precisely in any valuation of “personality,” not being necessarily more interesting, or having “more to say,” but rather by being a more finely perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new combinations. The analogy was that of the catalyst. When the two gases previously mentioned are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected; has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet [artist] is the shred of platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself; but, the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material. The experience, you will notice, the elements which enter the presence of the transforming catalyst, are of two kinds: emotions and feelings. (Tradition and the Individual Talent, Eliot).
Every day I fall short of the calling. But it is the choice to continue to live outside of myself and what I want - this is the first step in the path we are placed on. When you know you have a calling, or an opportunity beyond what you can fathom - do you understand what or who is calling you? Do you know why you are motivated in the ways you are? Or find your interesting hobbies in the things you do?
The experiment is mine. Trying, doing, failing, and then either giving up or moving forward. Those are my choices. Art - it could have literature, blending smoothies, or working at Walmart. It doesn’t matter, whatever my gifts are is where I will pursue a calling beyond myself. Yes, I enjoy the hard work of doing something that fits like a puzzle piece within my heart and mind. Do you? And yes, enjoyment can be a feeling - but there is something beyond that feeling, maybe it’s reassurance or confidence. You just know. And why limit ourselves to emotions, don’t you know there are more experiences than just that?
Do I know exactly what it is I am doing? No way. Will I move forward faithfully? I did today, I hope so tomorrow, and the next.
