The Dividing Line

Weekly wisdom to level up your creative life in 3 minutes, for free.

A SHORT STORY

As I mentioned last week, a last-minute COVID diagnosis thwarted my attempt at completing my first 100-miler. However, this setback allowed me to learn a few potent lessons in a short amount of time.

There’s a Confucian idea I love that says, "A healthy man wants a thousand things, a sick man only one." I meditated a lot on this over the past week. Instead of dwelling on the disappointment of missing the race, I chose to focus on gratitude for my body. This shift in perspective also helped me discover a deeper reason for attempting the 100-mile ritual in the first place.

Most importantly, I came across a powerful idea from James Clear:

"Dreams are fun when they are distant. The imagination loves to play with possibilities when there is no risk of failure.

But when you find yourself on the verge of action, you pause. You can feel the uncertainty of what lies ahead. Thoughts swirl. Maybe this isn't the right time? Failure is possible now.

In that moment—in that short pause that arises when you stand face to face with your dream—is the entirety of life. What you do in that pause is the crucible that forges you. It is the dividing line between being the type of person who thinks about it or the type of person who goes for it.

When I really think about it, I want that moment to be my legacy. Not that I won or lost. Not that I looked good or looked like a fool. But that when I had something I really wanted to do, I went for it."

It’s that dividing line I kept focusing on—when things didn’t go my way, how did I react? What did I choose?

If I accept that life is suffering, then training for the 100-miler was an act of preparing for that dividing line. It was an opportunity for me to choose my hard.

So, when the next hard thing presents itself, I can decide how I want to react.

I can decide what I want to do.

Have you ever found yourself standing at the edge of a dream, faced with that brief, intense moment of decision? How do you navigate that dividing line between merely imagining your goals and actually going after them?

A CREATIVE TOOL

As someone who is on the front lines of the debate of AI and art, I found this perspective refreshing and challenging to how we will continue to use these large language and image generator models in the future.

A PIECE OF ART

“The Man Watching” by Rainer Maria Rilke

Translated by Robert Bly

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister.

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great.
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestlers’ sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

Grateful,

Michael