The Power of ________

Letting yourself loose

Coordinates: In bed in Cairo with my new saz, a 7-stringed lute, beside me for company

Today’s card: Mediocre

I didn’t put the topic of today’s missive because, man… we really don’t want the medicine of the simple and ordinary.

I’m going to vastly simplify the world of humans into four categories, but in reality, it’s a continuum. The first two, unexpressed and expressed creativity are the province of the Panic/Incubate card. Both are cards in the Enneagram 4 archetype, which deal with the wounding around expressing emotions.

The next pairing is Ordinary/Mediocre. This deals with what happens once you've expressed your creativity and put it into the world. How does the universe dance or not dance with you?

Within all four categories, there’s a shadow and a light expression. There can be unexpressed creativity that rots you or unexpressed creativity that incubates richness that’s the seed for everything to follow. If the universe does flock to your door, there can be fame that eats you alive or fame that supports you to receive the resources to change the global culture.

Adding more to the complexity, within one human there are different projects, each occupying a different category. You may be known for your crime novels but have a pottery wheel in the backyard you go to as a refuge.

Obscurity

My family is a plain tribe. My grandmother’s mother and father were school teachers. They lived in St. Louis for a while until the Great Depression coaxed them back to the farm. My granny missed the 25 cent Cardinal baseball games that she and her brothers always went to in the city, and sat on her brown polyester plaid sofa and watched them on TV until she died at 87 years old.

There’s nothing at all special about my ancestors. They, nor I, are important.

Isn’t that great?

I didn’t used to think so. I spent almost all of my life chasing importance thinking it was a life raft of salvation from my miserable existence. I had no time to sit and watch TV with my granny. I’m now sad I didn’t take the time to share something so simple with her that gave her so much joy.

I didn’t ask about her friends in the neighborhood. I didn’t even know the names of the people who were special to her. I wish I could hold my 25-year-old self by the shoulders and tell her these things.

That’s the essence of getting over the egoic addiction to chasing the bullshit that appears important. My granny’s neighbors were worthy of my love and care, my time and attention, but it took me more than a decade to grow up enough to realize it.

I was really busy chasing fame that would save me from her fate – living in Pecan Grove aka the government-subsidized housing in Paragould, Arkansas, my hometown. I wanted to be famous enough to be rich enough not to have to live there.

And… I didn’t live there. I didn’t have to get famous to save myself from the fate I dreaded, though. I moved away soon after college and got a well-paying job as a web designer, a profession that cares nearly nothing about fame. I “sold out” my talent for a full-time paycheck. I’m glad I did.

As for my “real” art, I’ve sold two or at most three of my painting in my whole life, despite my art degree that says I’m a “real” artist. I like it this way. I paint watercolor aliens and blobs of color with eyeballs. I cannot be arsed to care what anyone else thinks. I already have enough demons in my head telling me what I paint is shit. If I had actual clients painting wouldn’t be fun for me anymore. I’m never going to be famous for my silly, fun paintings.

I’m grateful to be an ordinary creator. There’s enormous freedom in obscurity. Nobody fucks with me. Nobody care enough to complain to an editor, and even if they tried I don’t have one for them to complain to.

But why don’t we often hear the useful, simple medicine of this message? We don’t want to read articles about this, we want a formula to make us successful. This article will never go viral, because it’s so boringly true.

The medicine of this works instantly though, as soon as you can let your ego feel the bruise that you’ll never be important in the way your egoic pirana wants. Seven billion people can’t be famous. It’s a Ponzi pyramid scheme of attention where only those at the top of the winner-take-all game get the prize.

We want to be successful so we can stop feeling so miserable, but the truth is most of us are and always will be obscure.

There has to be a way to be an obscure creator and still live, love, and feel the joy of making something that is our birthright. We start by accepting that our art and ourselves never need to be important or special. We do not need to be famous to be loved. We do not need to be recognized by others to be recognized by ourselves.

Fame can be a wonderful thing, to be sure, but it is not as wonderful as you may idealize it to be.

Fame comes with many consequences. It fills your inbox with messages you cannot reply to. You carry the weight of other people’s projections. From many others’ points of view, you become not who you are but unwittingly morph into the avatar of their unfulfilled fantasies, the portal or gatekeeper to their success.

I know many rich and famous people. They are my clients. They tell me the real shit. Some of their kids are suicidal. Some of them are suicidal. Their romantic relationships are a tire fire. You would never know from their Instagram feed.

Fame in no way exempts you from feeling the entire range of emotions. How many celebrities climbed up the success pyramid only to find out it doesn’t pay off the piranha inside us? Even when they try to tell us we don’t want to listen. There’s no amount of fame or money that gets you out of the misery trap. The piranha that’s never satisfied can never be satisfied.

You have to find a different ground to stand on.

Obscurity is more wonderful than you may think. My ancestors lived their life invisible to outside interference. They did as they pleased. They loved as they pleased. They raised families and tilled the earth.

Millions of people around the world going back millenia made their ancestral pottery or carpentry or tilework or whatever without signing their work. We will never know their name. They carry on traditions of craft that are honorable, bring beauty to the world, and immense joy.

I am not more important than them. My work isn’t more special. If I ever attain this thing our culture obsesses over called fame, I pray I will never forget this.

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Contemplations from the guidebook

▼ If I’m extraordinary I’ll belong.
▲ We all belong everywhere and nowhere. [Maya Angelou]

▼ If I take care of myself I’ll be mundane.
▲ Taking care of myself supports my creativity.

▼ I must live up to the extremes of my exciting potential.
▲ I dissolve into the simplicity of an ordinary moment.