Not Always So

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

A SHORT STORY

There's a Zen phrase I've been pondering a lot this week:

"It may be so, but it is not always so."

It serves as a gentle reminder that we shouldn't cling to our preconceived notions of reality. Everything changes, and rigid thinking simply doesn't suffice in a world characterized by constant change.

It brings to mind a conversation I had with the Dalai Lama back in 2019. During a gathering, my colleague Sally posed a question to him:

"What is the one question you wish people asked you more?"

The Dalai Lama chuckled, then replied, "I don't know." However, he followed up with something quite profound.

He said, "When I was a child in Tibet, we would spend hours engaged in lively debates. We relished it! There was joy in seeing someone else deliver a stronger argument. I wish we had more of that spirit in today's world."

His insight resonates deeply with me, especially as our society continues to grapple with embracing complex truths.

Most importantly, I find myself reflecting on my own tendency toward rigid thinking and how I can adapt to thrive in a world of rapid change.

What creative problem are you solving this week? How can you break free from any rigid thinking as you work on it?

A CREATIVE TOOL

I learned this from Seth Godin this week - so I’ll let him share his insight here on a new AI tool to try this week!

“The new version of Claude can read a document of up to 400 pages in about three minutes.

You can then ask it for criticism, summaries or other insights.

I wouldn’t use it on a piece of literature, but if you’re reading for work (aren’t we all), it will dramatically increase how much you can survey before diving deep.

And it’s very talented at reading something you wrote and telling you where you might have gone astray. Simply say, “please summarize and critique this, looking for strategic errors and inconsistencies: ” and then paste your document. If it doesn’t understand what you meant to say, there’s a good chance the reader won’t as well.”

A PIECE OF ART

“The Weight of Our Living: On Hope, Fire Escapes, and Visible Desperation” by Ocean Vuong

originally published at The Rumpus

And yet, in a time where the mainstream seems to continually question the power and validity of art, and especially of poetry, its need, its purpose, in a generation obsessed with appearances, of status updates and smiling selfies bathed (corrected?) in the golden light of filters, in which it has become more and more difficult for us to say aloud, to one another: I am hurt. I am scared. What happens now?, the poem, like the fire escape, as feeble and thin as it is, has become my most concentrated architecture of resistance. A place where I can be as honest as I need to—because the fire has already begun in my home, swallowing my most valuable possessions—and even my loved ones. My uncle is gone. I will never know exactly why. But I still have my body and with it these words, hammered into a structure just wide enough to hold the weight of my living. I want to use it to talk about my obsessions and fears, my odd and idiosyncratic joys. I want to leave the party through the window and find my uncle standing on a piece of iron shaped into visible desperation, which must also be (how can it not?) the beginning of visible hope. I want to stay there until the building burns down. I want to love more than death can harm. And I want to tell you this often: That despite being so human and so terrified, here, standing on this unfinished staircase to nowhere and everywhere, surrounded by the cold and starless night—we can live. And we will.

Grateful,

Michael