Here’s a premise for your consideration: as life becomes more complicated and chaotic we apply more controls and disciplines to help us manage the mess. As we do so we necessarily, though unintentionally, constrain our natural creative resources, the resources we most need to employ if we are to successfully navigate additional and increasing complexity.
As “it” gets messier, we hold on tighter to feel more in control and by doing so limit our flexibility, our mobility and our range of options. We narrow our vision down to a very direct line of sight, one that while increasing our focus, diminishes our peripheral capacity. We see more of one thing and less of everything else. As such, we see more of the problem/challenge/difficulty/uncertainty and less of the possibilities for dealing with it as they remain beyond our ability to see.
Additionally, this focusing ability – nature’s gift to us in the game of survival – requires so much concentrated energy that we’re left with just enough to “get by” – sometimes sufficiently and successfully, sometimes not – in other areas of life. That is to say, we figure out how to fake it.
This is the best way I can think to explain the last five weeks of my life, which also and interestingly, though perhaps only coincidentally, happen to be the last five weeks of the year. I have been so singularly focused on one developing issue, one slowly evolving melodrama, that I lost my ability to focus on – to be present in -the creative outlets in my life that give me joy, inspiration and encouragement.
This is both my acknowledgment and my resolve. My commitment to move past the creative hijacking of circumstance and get back to work on what matters.
© 2010 David Berry
