95. From Inner To Outer

A human being is a body, its actions, and its words. All of these things exist in the physical world: a body can be felt, its actions can be seen, and its words can be heard. But a human being also has feelings and thoughts and these do not exist anywhere in the world. While they do have worldly counterparts, these counterparts are not the experienced things themselves.

Our thoughts and feelings exist for us in an inner space that the world cannot directly reach. The world can influence this space, but it is still wholly ours. We can think about anything we can imagine. We can invent ideas and structures without limit. We can be fully creative here without having to worry about even the possibility of criticism from anything or anyone in the world.

Everything we create in our inner space is also wholly ours. We hold these creations close and we might even feel they are part of our identity, for this space is also the domain of the self. While we do not share everything we think or feel, we do occasionally feel the urge to transform an idea into something tangible. We want our idea to have its own body, to exist in the world apart from us. We want this not only because we want to express ourselves but also because we see value in the ability of physical objects to outlast us.

But the act of creating a physical object is daunting. It means showing a completely private part of the self to the world. It means violating the inner space that is entirely ours alone by allowing a part of it to exist elsewhere. And this is true even if we do not intend to share our work with others. For the privacy of the inner space is total, and any leak from that sanctum must necessarily breach it. A part of the self that has been expressed to the world cannot be denied in the same way as something merely imagined.

To take creative action is to transcend our present self. It is to exceed the boundaries of our inner space and allow the self to grow. It grows because a part that was inner becomes outer and now exists in the physical world. The creative act grants that part of us a separate body and a new existence — an existence that is both part of the self and also entirely its own.