I recently came across this article on Facebook, and like many things on this BrainPickings site, I found it very relevant to my personal philosophy about Life (from www.brainpickings.org):
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work By Alain de Botton“One of the interesting things about success is that we think we know what it means. A lot of the time our ideas about what it would mean to live successfully are not our own. They’re sucked in from other people. And we also suck in messages from everything from the television to advertising to marketing, etcetera. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.”
Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity By Hugh MacLeod
“The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.
Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring. Know this and plan accordingly. … The best way to get approval is not to need it. This is equally true in art and business. And love. And sex. And just about everything else worth having.”
The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World By Lewis Hyde
“Work is what we do by the hour. It begins and, if possible, we do it for money. Welding car bodies on an assembly line is work; washing dishes, computing taxes, walking the rounds in a psychiatric ward, picking asparagus — these are work. Labor, on the other hand, sets its own pace. We may get paid for it, but it’s harder to quantify… Writing a poem, raising a child, developing a new calculus, resolving a neurosis, invention in all forms — these are labors.
Work is an intended activity that is accomplished through the will. A labor can be intended but only to the extent of doing the groundwork, or of not doing things that would clearly prevent the labor. Beyond that, labor has its own schedule. … There is no technology, no time-saving device that can alter the rhythms of creative labor. When the worth of labor is expressed in terms of exchange value, therefore, creativity is automatically devalued every time there is an advance in the technology of work.”
In addition to the quotes I have shared here, this article also contains additional quotes on this subject by Steve Jobs and others, including a link to “How to Do What You Love,” which I have posted here in its entirety.
This is also where I found the The Holstee Manifesto. I now also have this posted on the bulletin board above my desk.
And Life can be very Good – it’s all how you choose to perceive it – and how you choose to live.