192. A World Of Exaggeration

Everything you see is an exaggeration. This is because you are only seeing one side of things, while the other sides remain hidden. When you see only one side, you automatically expand that part to become the whole, filling in the blanks using your existing understanding. You might do this so well that you convince yourself you’re actually seeing the whole. But this is never the case. There is always more to reality than your current awareness can capture.

191. Creativity Is Compassion

Creative action is compassionate action. Every creative act makes explicit something that was previously unseen, and in doing so it helps those who encounter it see more of their own self and the world. By engaging with an artwork, we undergo a wholly new experience, which grants us an opportunity to become aware of what we have not already noticed. What is created by the artist is not just a physical artwork, but a broader awareness in the audience of what exists and what is possible in life.

190. The Search For Style

The artist’s concern is always style. It is the style of an artwork that most grants it aesthetic value, and it is this value that we most appreciate. The artist wants to develop a style that is beautiful so that the works they create will be popular and loved.

But the artist only ever has one style available to them. It’s the style that emerges directly from the sincere expression of their aesthetic intuitions. These intuitions arise out of the totality of the artist’s experience. This includes the works of other artists they have seen and their own history of art making, but it’s also more. It is all of the events of the artist’s life, all of their feelings and thoughts and perceptions, all of their memories and dreams, all of their judgments and values. In other words, the artist’s unique style is a reflection of their own composite humanity.

189. Stuck In The Past

You can’t stop replaying past events. You keep wondering if there might have been a better way, if you could have done something differently. Perhaps if you’d made a different choice, you might be in a much better place, somewhere more whole, peaceful, and happy than where you are now.

You wonder about this because your life feels lacking, and this lack worries you. You feel you’re missing something, and this missing element has made your life inferior to the one you’d imagined for yourself. You know you once had this missing thing and you don’t understand how you lost it. You went from a world of bliss and endless possibility to whatever this is. All you know is that this is worse, and you cannot shake that feeling.

188. To Be Always More

She is standing alone when a man approaches and says hello. He looks altogether harmless, so she returns the greeting. They’re at a social event and meeting new people is what you’re supposed to do.

He tells her that he likes her earrings. She smiles and thanks him. He asks her if she’s enjoying the event, and she says that she is. She doesn’t ask any questions in return. She’s terrible at thinking of questions. The burden thus falls to him.

187. Productivity And Compassion

When I feel I’m not making enough progress, I can easily become frustrated. This is especially true when the source of the delay is my own carelessness. I’ve been doing something other than what I should be doing, and now I’m behind schedule. Often the problem is simply that I’ve been distracted by something that has taken my attention away from my task. Seeing the amount of time I’ve lost, I judge myself harshly.

186. Words Say Too Much

The problem with language is that it always says too much. This is especially true when we’re trying to talk about how we feel. Our words come out sounding like a solemn declaration of fact, as though the emotions we’re describing are substantial, permanent, and unchanging, when they might be none of these things.

Perhaps our words only describe how we’re feeling at this one moment in time. Perhaps the feeling will have vanished in the next hour, the next day, or the next month. Perhaps the feeling doesn’t have the mass our words seem to grant it. Perhaps it is only meagre and small.

185. Endless Desire

You have a desire you cannot completely satisfy. You might be able to partly fulfill it, either now or in the future, but it will continue to exist because it is endless. You want more and more of the thing and you’ll never be fully satisfied with only some of it.

But there will come a day when you can no longer even partly fulfill your desire. Then you’ll be forced to admit you’ve done as much as you can, and this is as far as you’ll go. The desire will stick around even after you realize this, and you’ll have to accept its lack of further satisfaction for the rest of your life.

184. Rules And Rebellions

When there is a rule that feels wrong or harmful, we might rebel against it. A tension has formed between us and the rule. The rule says we ought to do something, but we can see it’s better to act in another way. Our first response is usually to complain about the rule, in the hope that others will agree with us and then the rule can be changed or removed. But if this fails, we might decide to disregard the rule, and behave as though it no longer exists.