Why you must be so ordinary
On releasing the greatness chase to make space for what's real
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Right now, I am the least ambitious I have ever been, and I love it for myself.
It might be called settling by some. It does have to do with giving up on greatness as an ‘end’. But I think what’s leading to my low ambition is cleaner and braver than what ‘giving up’ or ‘settling’ implies. Lately, I’ve been prioritizing my current reality over some imagined, future brilliance and attending to it with due care and loving attention.
When I do this fully, I feel more sated and more alive than I ever do when I’m chasing some ideal.
I am not saying don’t have goals, by the way. I am not saying don’t optimize, or strategize, or try to be and do better. I am just saying to do that with a measure of humbleness and kindness-to-self that means you arrive with your life, over and again—as opposed to waiting for it to arrive.
Because the phrase “It will finally be okay when …” repeats and repeats on you, like a wave, eroding. The future never arrives. You will never escape yourself.
To bring this into the sphere of creative work, when you’re driven to make art because you want to be brilliant there’s not much room for anything else.
Removing the greatness chase creates space for all the other feelings that can surround and come through art-making. It makes space for joy, freedom, silliness, gratitude, anger, grief, ecstasy, madness, whatever!
This week, I’m sharing some ways to think about and practice being ordinary.
Keep going,
Lucy
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Dreaming
How to release the greatness chase
a. Notice your greatness requirements
Depending, it probably won’t be in all realms, but listen for times you tell yourself things about your creative work that start with:
It’s not okay if
It’s only okay when
It will be okay when
It’s got to be
Investigate the beliefs surrounding such statements. Notice the tone you take with yourself when repeating them to yourself.
b. Experiment with turning requirements into desires
These can be vague, or lofty, or absurd as long as they’re true. They might sounds like:
I want to write a song that is so beautiful it makes people cry
I want to write a really catchy melody
I want to create a rich sonic world
Saying “I want to write a song that is so beautiful it makes people cry” has a meaningfully different effect than saying “Unless this song is deeply moving it is utter garbage!”
c. See if you can render those desires in more specific detail
This will give you something to focus on other than making your art great. It can even turn your desire into a kind of design brief, or a list of qualities to pursue in your song, or poem, or drawing.
I want to write a really catchy melody
could become
I want to write a melody that is so simple people sing along the first time
or
I want to write a melody that twists unexpectedly just when you think you know where it’s headed
Doing this might not mean you end up with a catchy song, but it does mean you have a focal point beyond ‘catchiness’ — and in my experience those conditions are more likely to lead to something catchy emerging.
Doing
Ways to be so ordinary
This is a list of actions that lead me to feel orders of magnitude more creative than when I chase greatness and organize my life around that chase.
Do your chores — if you make a habit of putting off attending to your various mundane commitments in order to ‘find inspiration’ and ‘make brilliant music’, stop it. Attending to the small boring bits in your life makes space for inspiration and art-making, not the opposite.
Keep your minor social commitments — If you say you’re going to do something (get back to someone about a date, read an article they sent you) do it. No matter how you feel. Even if it is way overdue. This also creates space, as opposed to reducing it. Somehow.
Do the slightly difficult thing you keep putting off — This I believe is what the road to greatness is actually paved in. Though I don’t know for sure, as I truly have achieved no greatness myself. Someone once told me we tend to under-estimate what we stand to lose by not taking action. This is about that.
Allow yourself to feel embarrassed — If you do the above, if you put yourself out there, you will feel rejected and cringe and embarrassed sometimes. I know everyone says this, but this is a good feeling, even though it is hard to feel and it does get easier to feel it over time.