.png)
Since it’s Valentines Day, here’s a five minute monologue called “Grief in Belfast” that’s all about friendship.
Archive - Creativity
RSS Feed
Treasures in jars of clay
Life is messy. It is impossible to open your eyes for more than two seconds without acknowledging the pain and brokenness in the world around us. The homeless guy without a place to sleep, the businessman clearly having an affair, the girl sitting at the table next to me lamenting to a friend about how she screwed her life up again last Saturday night… Each of these things I witnessed from my seat at a coffee shop in Beverly Hills this week.
We cannot deny the chaos around us (it’s great for writing) but we must make sure that it doesn’t dampen our spirit and blind us to an even greater truth… “we carry great treasures in these broken old jars of clay.”
It is the treasure that allows us to transcend the chaos, to reach out to the homeless, to forgive the unfaithful and to help up our friend who has fallen again, events I also witnessed at the coffee shop this week.
You have this treasure inside your jar of clay.
Good things take time.
Do you want to be a movie star? We live in the world of the SPECTACULAR… overnight success, lottery wins, love at first sight… the list goes on.
I once read this great quote by some anonymous guy that said…”tropical cyclones get far more attention than summer showers but they do a lot less good.”
This reminds me that “life” is a “craft;” that we are a rough lump of clay that is being molded and shaped into a great masterpiece; that each of us is a work in progress.
Craft by its very nature is a slow and delicate process full of much love, persistence attention, learning and a fear amount of pain. It is the attention to detail that separates a simple work of art from a magnificent masterpiece…
You could simplify this blog to 4 simple words… “Good things take time.“
2011 Copyright Seven Sentences – Good Things Take Time
The world isn’t round or flat…
The world isn’t round or flat… it’s upside down. It’s impossible to live a significant life unless you realize this fact; what do I mean?
Significance is about “changing things” and if you are going to make a “real difference” with your life then you must start with the belief that things need to change… that the world as you know it is upside down.
And the only way to change things is to flip the world the right way up; you can do this in your own unique way, through your own unique expression and work. You flip the world the right way up one person at a time… does this sound manipulative and anti-post modern?
What could be wrong about being the right way up? How can you live a significant life without “affecting” change in people?
Do you think people are essentially good?
Are people essentially good or in their essence bad? Now this may seem like an inane or deeply philosophical question, but what you believe about your fellow travellers will greatly affect the way you live your life. It is also a foundational belief that will form and shape the art that you create.
I realize that a lot of people in these post modern times are terrified of living in “good and bad” absolutes; the fact that people can be both selfless and selfish is definitely beyond dispute; but what is at the very heart of the matter? What is at the heart of you and me?
What do you think? Vote in the poll below…
You have talent
I spent last night down at Hotel Cafe in Hollywood listening to a friend of mine, Jodi King perform, check out Jodi’s music by clicking here.
The Entertainment Industry often tricks us into idolizing a “few” people who we are told have “extra special” talent. Actors, musicians, writers etc are pawns in the hands of industry giants who make a fortune (and pay these artists a fortune) by telling the rest of us apparently untalented souls that we could never sing and dance like Brittany Spears.
We are not sold hope, we are sold wistful despair. So we turn on our Ipods and for forty minutes we imagine what it would be like to “be with” or to “be like” our ”incredibly talented idol.”The fact that our “idol” shits on the same crapper and can’t do maths is never allowed to enter in to the illusion.
You have much more talent than they will have you believe and if we do this right the internet will allow us to even the score.
If you want to go faster… slow down
Sometimes I feel frantic in my work, like a piece of wood tossed and thrown about in the white water on a very rough river. I fight for air, I battle against the current, I lose perspective, I have no idea where the water will take me… I panic. In short I have forgotten to trust myself and I have forgotten to trust the water.
On the river if you want to go faster then you need to slow down… being frantic doesn’t help and it’s never an enjoyable ride. Slowing down enables you to be deliberate and insightful, it allows you to make good decisions and to navigate a path through the twists and turns of life.
There is power in slowing down and there is sense of joy in trusting the river…
Terror on the white water
Trusting the water
