I am currently reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Big Magic.
And I would most certainly entertain the idea of sharing its every page with you here if space, and copyright laws, would allow. So the best I can do in this arena is to recommend that you get one for yourself.
But I do want to share this bit of inspiration.
“Human beings have been creative beings for a really long time—long enough and consistently enough that it appears to be a totally natural impulse. To put the story in perspective, consider this fact: The earliest evidence of recognizable human art is forty thousand years old. The earliest evidence of human agriculture, by contrast, is only ten thousand years old. Which means that somewhere in our collective evolutionary story, we decided it was way more important to make attractive, superfluous items than it was to learn how to regularly feed ourselves.”
Makers gonna make! (Even PADUCAH LIFE can pop some Swift culture here, right?) No matter what the circumstances, or the surroundings, or the ability, there is, I believe and so does Liz Gilbert, an inspiration inside each of us to be more than the sum of our parts. Within each of us is an ultimate longing to bring forth something that makes us unique—and uniquely qualified to express a flow of thought or a vision of shape and color or a rhythm of sound and sensory perception.
And though there are gems on every page of Big Magic, this excerpt particularly aligns with my own philosophy of LIFE more than any other. When Gilbert refers to living creatively, she explains that she doesn’t mean necessarily devoting yourself to pursuing a life that is professionally or exclusively devoted to the arts. “No, when I refer to ‘creative living,’ I am speaking of living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.”
The two words I most want attributed to me both now and forever are interested and interesting. For, everything about our days and nights and months and years can be enhanced by an insatiable curiosity and an interest in all the marvels that abound around us. And from that innate interest in the world we can MAKE our life and that of those around us immeasurably better.
So MAKE yourself comfortable and take a gander at some of the people in this issue that are making LIFE in these parts a lot more interesting and maybe even a little big magical!
