The World Will Not Have It

I have long believed that the universe, or our personal God, or perhaps just sheer serendipity endeavors to whisper just the right words into your soul at just the right time. Yesterday while flicking through The Creative Entrepreneur (which is one of the most well executed business books for creative women I have ever come across) I read this gorgeous quote from Martha Graham…

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action: And because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. You must keep that channel open. It is not for you to determine how good it is, nor how valuable. Nor how it compares with other expressions. It is for you to keep it yours, clearly and directly.”

..and it resounded loudly deep inside my ever insecure stomach because we are always so quick to compare, and to imitate. To analyse ourselves and declare ourselves wanting. To say this isn’t enough. This is too much. I am not her. I will never be her. Oh how I want to be her. To abandon work before it is completed. To never even start. To see too much of our awful awkward selves in everything we create. To let ego dance around everything we do, pulling tongues and calling us terrible names. To find ourselves quite unable to read what we have wrote, stare at what we have painted or look at ourselves for long enough in the mirror to see what the night has done to our face.

But you know what? Our only obligation is to keep on keeping on. To exist in our own little bubble, churning out whatever it is that spills forth, and totally believing in it. That is all anyone can ask of us and everything else is just dried up gravy.

So, though I live in fear of who I might be, I’m keeping on keeping on, clearly and directly. Martha’s quote was merely a timely reminder that the world would not have it otherwise. Not for any of us.