Finding Guidance in Moments of Uncertainty

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

A SHORT STORY

This past week, I felt a bit lost in terms of how to proceed with something that was bothering me.

So, I consciously brought to mind certain teachers I have had in the past.

In my twenties, I spent a lot of time traveling around the world and learning from masters of various traditions.

One of them, Gurukkal, whom I have spoken about before in this newsletter, once shared an important practice from India with me.

When you study with a teacher, he told me, it is important to spend as much time around them as possible.

He explained that if someone is living a very deep or high inner process, proximity gives a person the chance to perceive that process inside themselves.

So, when I felt lost this week, I found myself thinking about how those master teachers I encountered, like Gurukkal, would navigate this moment.

And I felt better.

In many ways, I was able to discover a bit of that inner process I learned from them.

Not through words, but by simply being. By noticing.

Perhaps, I thought to myself, if I can recenter myself enough, I could offer such grace to another.

Who do you think of when you feel lost? How can you show up like them today?

A CREATIVE TOOL

I rarely listen to podcasts twice, but I found myself returning to the ideas presented in this podcast over and over in my mind.

Arthur Brooks is a social scientist, professor at Harvard, and an author. In the two hours of this conversation, he shares so much wisdom about how to find purpose and happiness in one’s own life.

As an artist, it is perhaps the most important tool - putting one’s life into perspective and interrogating what one is pursuing in life.

A PIECE OF ART

“God” by Michael Bazzett

for Ada Limon

Look, it’s not that I believe in him. Nor he in me. We have moved beyond all that. I just like having someone there in the dark. Usually we sit in silence, waiting for passing headlights to glide across the ceiling and knock stray prayers loose from where they got stuck on their way out, so many years ago. It’s almost like finding old piñata candy, says God, picking one from the floorboards. He unwraps it, takes a quick taste. Winces. Nods like he’s just remembered something for the thousandth, thousandth time. What is it? I ask. It’s kind of like chewing tinfoil, he says. All that aching naked hope.

Grateful,

Michael