Just listened to Elizabeth Gilbert speak about the creative process. She, a far more famous person, writer, etc. than I, said something I have long believed… but forget from time to time. I forget because of the Parasite that haunts me and tells me things… things like “you’ll never be good enough to do (fill in the blank).” That bastard, Parasite! Gilbert reminds us that perhaps, we don’t have to lose our minds, be tormented, depressed, moody, drug/food/alcohol/relationship addicted or full of unrest because we are creatives. We don’t have to live doomed lives trying to live up to our potential, to our expectations, to the searing pain that burns us when we can not quite get that “thing” out of us which is making us, driving us, to create, tell a story, form words, shapes, make pictures, perform or whatever thing it is we do, when we do what we do. She says that back in the ancient day, talent was not ascribed to the creative. The creative was only seen as a channel of the divine through which art, music, poetry, song and story flowed. What a thing to grasp… to remember! We aren’t in this “thing” alone! In some way, we actually have- what one really annoying radio host used as his tagline- “talent on loan from God.” I hate to quote him, but the words are good. He used the term to self-agrandize. Here the phrase speaks to the fact that our talents, if we indeed have any, are not ours to keep. They belong to The Divine, to The Universe, to The Genius lurking in the corner of our rooms. We are not geniuses…. We have a genius, if we are good at something we do. It is a collaboration between us as a willing vessel/channel and the Genius to bring forth the creative into the world. We can release the internal tormented thing from within us and return it to the Wild where a genius belongs. Maybe the most extraordinary parts of ourselves are only on loan to us from the All. This relieves us of some of the pressure, does it not? All we are obliged to do is to continue to show up for our piece of it. It is up to us to keep doing what we do. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, walk through leaves and over bridges… to keep going…. keep attempting to manifest, to bring forth, the transcendent brilliance of the Genius into the world. If we do so, if we just keep trying, whether we transcend or not… we have done our part. We have shown up. We have attempted to dial God’s number… maybe we got a busy signal, maybe we got voicemail… we were true to our gift on loan in that we showed up, we worked, we made the effort to live up to the gifts we have been entrusted with, until such time as The Divine passes them on to a new channel. And in doing so, we deserve the salutation, “Olay!” Want to know why? Listen to Elizabeth yourself: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html She’ll tell you… she rocks, eats, prays and loves…. lol. See ya!