Keep Creating, Homie

I’ve started newsletters and podcasts and content creation ideas that, when floating in my mind, feel like exactly what the world needs… until they materialize.

Satisfaction in one’s own work has got to be one of the most random, grueling feelings. It almost feels embarrassing to express, cuz, in my mind, the externalization of my imagination onto a page—or a screen or an audio track—shouldn’t birth such agony and overthinking once I release said creations into the wild…

Other things matter more, right? Like debt. Like broken relationships. Like depression. In a sea of such awful happenings, why do my creations affect me the most emotionally? Why am I numb to the traumas that deal with real life, while the world I want to create drives the most vulnerable parts of me?

Perhaps my creative compulsion and ambition are controlled by the desire for feedback. And not just any old generic feedback. The type of feedback that turns me into a franchise. The type of feedback that makes me feel I got an “out the mud” story unrivaled by the nichest of earth’s heroes.

But, I think what affects me lies deeper than the introspection above. Many of us already know the danger of sacrificing contemplation for ambition and authenticity for adulation (even if it is tougher for extroverts like me). But, I wonder if my deep connection to the outcome of my humble offerings, even in neglect of financial and relational stressors, is borne out of an inescapable desire to create beauty that outlasts and silences the “real” moments that determine my daily existence.

Mystics have taught me the life-saving task of writing my feelings and dreams into a world that allows what’s considered implausible in the world we stub our toes in. There is power in building an internal world that breathes forth freedom for all and hopes to eventually undo the heavy loads placed upon my immigrant parents. This inner world serves not to seep myself in delusion, but to defy the forces that discourage us from ushering the heaven on earth we know God wants to fashion.

Though we’ve been told we can’t have it, and history introduces us to optimistic, prophetic figures who’ve been snuffed out before people with power had the chance to undo the mess they started, the contemplative life enables us to relight the candle of beauty while the world around us is melting from the breath of Satan.

To channel our dreams into reality is a space of uncertainty. The possibility for encouragement and resonance is unpredictable, but the outcome of failure is expected. How do we hold the tension of traversing back and forth from an inner world no one but us can see while accepting that the impact of our translating externally the beauty we’ve discovered within doesn’t rest in our control?

And, even further, what if the point isn’t that the beauty is traced back to us, but that we were able to encounter beauty in a world that fights so hard to separate us from it in the first place?

I want that to be my motivation to create more than it is a grand hope to bless the nations. Though, that would be lovely. A smaller (but more difficult) feat, I believe, would be to relish in the hope that glimmers just right beneath the horrors that hound us.

A late, well-known pastor once said to his friend, “We are exposed to so much brokenness in the city, we must constantly expose our hearts and minds to beauty.” Let this exposure to beauty be the win. Even if it doesn’t come from what you yourself create. May the leaves that rustle and the birds that sing and the faces we pass by everyday tell us the stories of beauty we often forget exist.

And when you have the courage, energy, and time to pick back up on the creativity you often feel worried to release, create. And when you’ve spent some time healing from the wounds that busyness and too much time lingering in the inner world might cause, create for the sake of encounteromg beauty and watch it wash over others when you don’t feel the pressure to impress or be in control.

Keep creating, Homie, you may not know it but we desire and need the beauty you’ve encountered whenever you decide :).

Luh y’all big time,

Ru.

Photo by Nikhil Mitra on Unsplash