No matter what happens today, the one thing you can do is focus
How you express yourself is your creativity. Your creativity may be a path to recovery. For me, writing is a significant way that I am working through my own healing journey. I believe that creativity has the power to recreate you. That sounds like a serious job, but in reality, creativity is what brings you joy.
How do you express joy? What brings you joy? Today, let joy be your mantra.
I came across this manifesto by Wendy MacNaughton and Courtney E. Martin. This piece was featured in Brain Pickings by Maria Popova. If you are not a subscriber to Brain Pickings, I highly recommend it.
The manifesto is about creativity in uncertain times. Creativity is about holding onto joy, and expressing your spirit into the world. Recovery shares much with creativity: moving forward in uncertain times, holding onto joy, expressing and growing yourself and your spirit.
Recovery is about letting the light back into your life. Light will look like many things: hope, love, joy, being yourself, not being controlled by fear. Don’t be discouraged if you fall or if you feel broken because your cracks are how the light will find it’s way to you.
Today, you have an assignment…
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“This is your assignment.
Feel all the things. Feel the hard things. The inexplicable things, the things that make you disavow humanity’s capacity for redemption. Feel all the maddening paradoxes. Feel overwhelmed, crazy. Feel uncertain. Feel angry. Feel afraid. Feel powerless. Feel frozen. And then FOCUS.
Pick up your pen. Pick up your paintbrush. Pick up your damn chin. Put your two calloused hands on the turntables, in the clay, on the strings. Get behind the camera. Look for that pinprick of light. Look for the truth (yes, it is a thing—it still exists.)
Focus on that light. Enlarge it. Reveal the fierce urgency of now. Reveal how shattered we are, how capable of being repaired. But don’t lament the break. Nothing new would be built if things were never broken. A wise man once said: there’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. Get after that light.
This is your assignment.”
Originally appeared in Brain Pickings by Maria Popova
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For more on creativity and well being:
How to Create a Better Mindset in Your Recovery
What Creativity can Teach Us About Recovery
I write articles about wellness, leadership, parenting and personal growth. My hope is to deliver the best content I can to inspire, to inform and to entertain. Sign up for my blog if you want to receive the latest and best of my writing. If you like what I have to say, please share my work with your friends.
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Keep it Real
Photo credit: Maria Popov and smswaby
Getting High on Recovery 