Reading Find Your Howl opened my eyes. The whole thing is basically a metaphor but it makes you think and you can interpret it any way you want. The story about his fifth grade classmate gave me goose bumps. The main point Flaum was trying to get across was that you can't escape your situation easily. In order to gain freedom you have to take a walk through a very dark and dense forest with no path; you're alone in the journey. Hopefully you make it out alive, and when you do, it will be the best feeling.
"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."
My brother gave me a necklace with a pendent on it that had this quote surrounding it. I didn’t really think much of it for a while though. I went to Belgium as an exchange student and wore the necklace everyday. So naturally, people started asking me questions about it or wanted to know what it said. I usually had someone to translate it to them, but once I understood how to translate it myself, I got to answer them. And once I started to repeat it myself, the words began to gain more and more meaning.
Each word’s meaning really made sense because I had to think about what they meant in English, and then figure out the meaning in French. Learning a different language and learning to speak it well enough to communicate can really open up your mind. You learn how to connect with others and understand how they think. They can also teach you so many things that you probably wouldn’t have thought of.
Having an open mind is the first step to creating something.
Like the quote says, you aren’t just going to wake up one day and have the perfect life. You have to work at it everyday. And sometimes you are going to fail or find out the path you’re on isn’t the one you thought you wanted to be on. But you’re allowed to change your mind; you’re allowed to have a different opinion on something.
Once you learn that you are allowed to fail or change your mind, you can learn how to make something that you think is bad, into something that could be the best thing in the world. And there is the second step in creating.
Not everyone will take the same path. Some people are born ready to create – they don’t need to go step by step. I call these people ‘lucky’. Very few people are that lucky, most of us have to work at it. And again, most of us will fail a few times before we find the best way to make it work.
When you find out you don’t have to be the same as everyone else, it gives you a sense of freedom. Most people want to show off their differences and embrace them. That’s where creating comes into play. People create things to show them off; to let others see things the way they do.
Even then, when you create something, not everyone is going to understand it or like it. But again, you learn what they like or understand, from the things you fail at. For example, you make a painting that you think is amazing so you show it to your friend. But they don’t like it, so you ask them why. That’s another key, you have to find out what you did wrong to make something better. When they tell you what they don’t like, you make another painting and use their advice. You show it to them again and they like it. This makes you feel good, like you are doing something right.
Now let’s say you create a painting that is a little abstract and you show it to another friend. You ask them what they think of it and they tell you something you never thought of before. All because everyone thinks different, so different people will interrupt your painting in different ways. You like what your friend tells you about your painting, so you make another one; this time it’s even more abstract. Your friend sees it and tells you something again. This process keeps going and going. You might not have started off wanting to be a painter, but because of the feedback you got, you continue.
Being creative is addictive. As soon as someone gives you some positive feedback, you want to make more. And even more powerful is negative feedback – it can either make you want to create something better to prove them wrong, or it can crush you and make you not want to create anything again.
The only way to get through life it to be creative, at least for me.
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