The Artist's Paradox

I don't consider myself important.  At the same time, I don't engage in self-loathing or self-belittlement.  If I look at our tiny blue planet with seven billion people and the infinite (as far as we know) Universe beyond it I can see that I am not at all important.  A small grain of sand on the beach.  Will the beach miss me if I'm gone?

The answer I usually get is that the beach as a whole won't miss me, but other grains of sand that were close to me might.  But that would imply that I gauge my importance relative to what others may or may not feel about me.  "Weak," I reply.  "Very weak, my friend."

And, instead, I offer the Artist's paradox.  Imagine that you are a world-famous artist, a sculptor-extraordinaire.  Your skill is unparalleled and your creativity is limitless.  One day, you find yourself on a secluded beach with fine white sand.  The tide is out and there is plenty of sand between the water and the rocks higher up on the beach.

You get the inspiration to make a sand castle, the most beautiful you've ever built, with intricate details of ramparts,  the court chapel and even a clock tower.  You get to work and lose yourself in your creation.  From under your artful hands rises an amazing sand castle.

Yet, you know that in an hour or two the tide will come back in and your castle will once again join the beach it came from and no one will have had a chance to see it.

You know that your sand sculpture in unimportant.  But, you care deeply about it and put every bit of yourself into it.  Regardless of how long it will last or whether anyone will see it.

That is the Artist's Paradox.  Caring deeply about something while being aware of its unimportance.

Perhaps, it is the very thing that gives passion to the artists that many people appreciate but few can duplicate.  Caring deeply, without holding back, yet knowing how unimportant it all is in the grand scheme of things.

I know that I, myself, am unimportant.  Still, I care deeply about what I do and I do it without holding back.  I do it for me, without considering what gratitude or appreciation I may get from others.  I live for me, knowing that my life belongs to me and only me, and that the benefits that other people may get from my efforts are but side effects of my caring and my unimportance.

I am glad that the beach won't miss me.

"I Just Hate That!"

“I just hate that!” She was really passionate about her dislike for strength training. “The thought of spending time in a gym with a bunch of meatheads just makes me vomit.” I said nothing and looked at her face, lips tightly pursed and eyebrows almost meeting above the bridge of her nose. I was looking at an attractive woman of 28, with a college education and from a fairly well-off family. “I just want to be fit and lose fifteen pounds, I don’t need to lift weights and get big muscles,” she added. The look on her face turned wistful.

A long time ago, when I still thought that it was OK to try to change people, I would have given a good effort to persuading her that strength training was, indeed, a method to employ to achieve her goals. I would have pointed out the fact that not all people who lift weights are “meatheads” and that growing muscles is not such an easy thing to accomplish, especially for women. Now, I simply wondered where she acquired such a nonsensical belief and by what process she turned that myth into a passionate hatred.

Is it the weakness of the mind that leads people to accept someone’s opinion as fact? Is it the weakness of the spirit that keeps people from exploring what’s inside themselves, for fear of finding out that they are not as they wish they were? Is it the weakness of the body, the conditioned laziness that makes the idea of inaction so attractive? The questions are many. I have few answers, except pointing out what can be easily seen by anyone who wishes to see.

If we accept an opinion of someone as the truth, we surrender our right to inquire to the altar of the myth. Without the driving force of curiosity, we feel powerless and seek others like ourselves, as we intuitively know that there is great power in numbers. We blend into a group of people who feel similar to the way we do and, as a group, we create a system of beliefs that makes it easy to live without curiosity. We feel threatened by the people who do not share our beliefs and begin to view them as enemies. We dislike our enemies. We just turned the myth into hatred.

It is a simple process. It works the same way on a scale as grand as the Holocaust or as insignificant as weight-lifting. Before 320 CE, there was no anti-Semitism. As a matter of fact, there was no symbol of the cross in Christianity. The early Christians used symbols of life, not death, in their worship. As Constantine began using the cross to identify Christianity, he also began propagating the idea that the Jews killed Jesus Christ. Anti-Semitism was born and is alive and well to this day.

Constantine brought Christianity to the Roman Empire and, thus, to the Western World. A curious person may ask questions like these: “What kind of a man was Constantine? What does history tell us about him? Was he the kind of man whose jealousy would compel him to kill his own son and his own wife? Was he the kind of man who would erect a statue of himself that was, at the time, the largest statue in the Roman Empire and, perhaps, the world? Was he the kind of man whose word could be accepted as the truth?"

If we look at the so-called counter-culture, we will notice the same process of turning the myth into hatred. The steps and the outcome may appear different, but the dynamics are essentially identical. The myth is that people of the mainstream culture have “sold out” to capitalism and that it is bad. A few people accept the myth as truth and form groups that view mainstream as their enemy to be hated. They begin to distinguish themselves from the mainstream by wearing different clothes, different color hair, piercings, tattoos and boots. A small counter-culture is created. The free market responds and mass-produces and mass-markets the attributes and accouterments of that counter-culture. People who started it make a ton of money and become famous. They “sell out” and a small counter-culture turns into a large part of the mainstream.

To accept an opinion as only a possible and an incomplete truth is to keep our curiosity and to claim our ability to move forward. To look inside ourselves is to have the courage to find something we don’t like. To admit to have been wrong is to have the playfulness in our lives and to keep playing. To get to the horizon just to see the next one is to stay open to the possibilities. Even if it is something as trivial as losing fifteen pounds.