duty to create

june 25 | weekly warm-up

Reflect on the extent to which you feel a duty to commit time and energy to your creative pursuits.

What is your duty to yourself?

What is your duty to humanity, if any? How do you contribute to humanity by nurturing your creative life? How does our individual commitment to creativity impact the collective energy of the world?

What is your duty to your Creator?

In what other ways do you feel a duty to create?

Do you believe that it’s your duty as a human being to pursue inspiration and be creative? If so, is the duty to yourself? to humanity? to a higher power? Here’s some food for thought inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic.

duty to self

I do see it as my responsibility to occupy my mind in healthy creative ways, because otherwise, my mind will get creative in unhealthy ways. Elizabeth Gilbert describes it well, “Possessing a creative mind, after all, is something like having a border collie for a pet: It needs to work, or else it will cause you an outrageous amount of trouble. Give your mind a job to do, or else it will find a job to do, and you might not like the job it invents (eating the couch, digging a hole through the living room floor, biting the mailman, etc.). It has taken me years to learn this, but it does seem to be the case that if I am not actively creating something, then I am probably actively destroying something (myself, a relationship, or my own peace of mind).”

When left to its own devices, my mind is all over the place — reactive, defensive, worried, insecure, afraid, busy minding other people's business, minding God's business. I remember how unwell I was when I didn’t have healthy creative outlets, and it was a stressful way to live. When my mind was not busy with inspiration, wonder, and curiosity, it was busy with dread, catastrophe, and self-loathing. It was a hopeless place. So, yes. I do believe that I have a duty to myself to, in Gilbert’s words, live a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.

“My soul, when I tend to it, is a far more expansive and fascinating source of guidance than my ego will ever be, because my soul desires only one thing: wonder. And since creativity is my most efficient pathway to wonder, I take refuge there, and it feeds my soul, and it quiets the hungry ghost—thereby saving me from the most dangerous aspect of myself.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert

duty to humanity

I was in a coaching workshop with Task Human not too long ago, and one of the coaches shared that a marketing instructor told them that one way to get over the fear of selling is to believe that if you don’t aggressively push your services onto someone that you know you can help, then you are hurting them. Obviously, that’s absurd, but just adjacent enough to truth to be an effective (albeit unethical) tactic that works for many. But at what cost?

Yes, I believe that if I have a gift that can help someone that I should offer it. I definitely shouldn’t hold it back because of fear. But I don’t believe it’s ethical or necessary to push and fight and be manipulative to reach people. I believe that it’s my duty to live a fully expressed life and all that comes with that—sharing my ideas and truths, being a source of joy, creating ripple effects that inspire others to create. I believe I have a responsibility to heal myself through creativity as much as I can so that I can offer more help and cause less harm in the world.

“What does being on the top have to do with vocation? What does it have to do with the pursuit of love? What does it have to do with the strange communion between the human and the magical? What does it have to do with faith? What does it have to do with the quiet glory of merely making things, and then sharing those things with an open heart and no expectations?” ―Elizabeth Gilbert

duty to a higher power

I no longer consider myself to be a religious person, although I was raised in the church and am still highly spiritual. Creativity is my spiritual practice. Writing is my religion, my connection to God. And this is my work. So yes, I do feel a sense of duty to honor my divine instincts and let the work that wants to come through me to do so with as little resistance as possible on my part. I write, in Gilbert’s words, as an act of love, a lifelong commitment to the search for grace and transcendence.

“I am a child of God, just like anyone else. I am a constituent of this universe. I have invisible spirit benefactors who believe in me, and who labor alongside me. The fact that I am here at all is evidence that I have the right to be here. I have a right to my own voice and a right to my own vision. I have a right to collaborate with creativity, because I myself am a product and a consequence of Creation.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert

How about you? This week’s exercise is to pursue these questions for yourself.