Paraphased from the book Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert:
“Creative living… [is] living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.”
For example, a 40 year old woman remembered loving figure skating as a teenager and despite enjoying it, she’d abandoned it because at the time she was told she wasn’t good enough to be truly great at it (and why bother if you can’t be the best at it?), so she focused her efforts elsewhere.
Now, as a middle aged woman, she was listless, restless and did some soul-searching for ways to reconnect with joy. She remembered that the last time she really connected with that joy was when she doing figure skating as a youth, and was curious to see if she still loved it.
Part of her had fear: she was self-conscious of being a middle aged woman on the ice again.
But a bigger part of her was curious.
She was driven more strongly by her curiosity than by her fear. And the result? She reconnected with something that gives her great joy to this day.
“She discovered that skating is still the best way for her to unfold a certain beauty and transcendence within her life that she cannot seem to access in any other manner. And she would like to spend as much time as possibl ein such a state of transcendence while she is still here on earth.
That’s all.
That’s what I call creative living.”
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What are you curious about?
Examples:
- Curious to see if you’ll enjoy a certain hobby you’ve always wanted to try eg learning to play the harp
- Curious to see if you’ll be a natural, naturally good at a certain skill eg dancing
- Curious to see if you can learn a certain skill to a certain level and achieve certain results eg learning to take beautiful photography
- Curious to see if you can do something you want to do, eg write that book / screenplay – climb that mountain
- Curious to really, really experience BIG LOVE
- Curious to see if you can find that feel-good, loving relationship you dream of
- Curious to see if you can find like-minded people to you in the world
- Curious to see different places, countries, famous sites & sights etc in the world
- Curious to taste different specific foods you’ve heard about or are wondering about
- Curious to experience certain experiences
