Have you ever felt so excited about something you’re bubbling with energy? So much so you just wanna, you just wanna squeeze a bunch of grapes or something from being so giddy. (….no?)
Sometimes I’ll get the feeling through entertainment. (No not that kind of entertainment, get your mind out of the gutter, Steve.) When I re-watch or re-read some of my favorite stories, like moments in Bleach or Community or The Name of The Wind, or when I read an insight (usually a quote from Steve Jobs or Seneca) how I feel is synchronized with the energy of the idea.
I’ll feel it when I create sometimes too. When I write a song that just, fits. Or when I write or design ideas that seem to flow out of the ether. It’s like your hitting a note that is connect to something larger, something harmonized. Like two bells ringing together for a just a moment that resonate with each other, or your car’s blinker and the blinker of the car in front match the beat for a split second, lightning, just before they go their separate ways.
I think ideas are like this. They resonate in the air in moments of time. From the complicated, interwoven network of cause and effects in our world, creating ideas that strike a chord in the hearts of people who have never met and aren’t aware of their shared experience. Getting a little trippy here, I know. At the very least it’s an odd phenomenon.
There’s also the fact that you could make something, a piece of art, a song, a statement, an application, a comment… that resonates with me from a distance. Your creativity sparking my imagination and creativity. Or, even crazier, someone’s ideas in the past, hundreds, thousands of years ago, reflecting on to me in the present moment. Or even this very post, resonating with someone in the distant future.
BUT.
But not all the time.
I think synchronicity such as this only happens when you feel the energy and heart yourself. Perhaps bad ideas don’t last. (Unless it’s so bad they put it in the history books) Or maybe without the heart and soul behind the creativity, it doesn’t leave a spark. Doing thing for the wrong reason — for the money, because you have too, because that’s what’s everyone does, because that’s what everyone always does, to fit in, for status, fame, power — can get you those things sometimes (fame, power, money, normalcy, etc), but it doesn’t vibrant the same as something with heart behind it.
Sometimes work that I do just doesn’t jive me up. The more I think about these jobs (especially in hindsight) the more I realize I was doing it for the wrong reasons, or doing it because I felt like I had too, which isn’t great for my well-being and peace of mind or for the work itself.
Work without heart is just another random book on the shelf, another website or app, another gimmick, another product being sold, another social media account, another choice in a heap of choices.
Gravitate towards things that inspire and light you up, and others will gravitate towards the work you create as well.
STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh W.
