Making is Breathing

June 25th, 2015, 3pm

Imagine this. You’re sitting in a car, eating lunch. The windows are rolled down. It’s a little hot outside, probably too hot to really be sitting in your car comfortably, but then there’s the breeze. Without the breeze, this whole situation would be impossible. The breeze comes, and it’s like, “Okay, sitting in this car right now is the greatest thing ever. Man, that feels good.”

But the breeze isn’t there all the time. It only happens once in a while. You have to wait for the breeze. You can’t make the breeze come, it doesn’t listen to you. Breeze just breezes. Breezes gonna breeze.

Buddha in the breeze.

And then you might have a thought. And the thought goes, “Hey man, you gotta write something.” And of course you don’t know what to write or why this thought is interrupting your nice breeze time.

“Hey man, you gotta write something. Hope it’s as good as it was yesterday. Remember how great that was? Do that again.”

Fear is mounting now. You can’t make writing come any more than you can make the breeze come. Or any more than you can force yourself to breathe out infinitely. It just isn’t how the thing works.

So you take a moment and say, “Hey, let’s just wait for the breeze.”

And then, finally, out comes the breeze.


Craig said thanks.

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Kevin McGillivray

Stories about creativity, mindfulness, and design (and often tea, too).

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