The purpose of a creative life is not to make so much noise that you are heard and seen by everyone.
You can’t reach everyone.
Nor can you please or change everyone.
Most people will not get the joke.
It’s not for them.
The purpose of a creative life is to make beautiful noise that you are proud of and then to share it.
If you do this consistently enough, the right people will find you, they will bring others along for the ride, and these will become your people.
No one tries to fold a blanket from the middle first.
We start with the edges and the corners.
Why, then, do we think we can find what we are looking for in our lives, our careers, and our relationships by starting in the middle, by trying to please everyone, and by doing what is or what will be popular?
The middle is not where change starts.
Change starts at the edges and the corners.
The middle is not interesting.
The middle has no character, no definition, and does not tell us anything about who we are and the change we are trying to make.
The edges and the corners are what give us our shape.
They give us our character and our definition.
If we want to make change in our lives and in the lives of those around us, we must first try to find the edges and the corners of ourselves.
We must focus on these edges and corners.
We have to learn to accept, embrace, and accentuate them.
Over time, maybe, just maybe, others with similar edges and corners will see what we are trying to do and will say, “Yes. I am like that too. I have similar edges and corners. Thank you for showing me yours.”
And, this is how a community starts.
It starts at the edges and the corners.
I have two standards for my associations, regardless of whether they are personal or professional. The first requirement is that I like and respect you. The second that you like and respect me.
If one of these standards is not met, I find it very difficult to move forward. In my experience, there is no personal, financial, or positional gain worth having if I have to associate with people or institutions I do not like and respect and who do not also like and respect me.
This may seem overly simplistic, perhaps even naive and childish, but I have tried many different combinations of relationship in my life and this is more an explanation of my experience than of my ideology. This is not some belief I have. It is a fact of my being.
Simply put, life is too short to be wasted on relationships within which there is not a mutual sense of appreciation and values. This does not mean that we must like all things about one another nor that we agree on every issue. That is an unrealistic impossibility.
It does mean, however, that in order for me to want to give my time, my attention, and my energy to a relationship with a person, an organization, or a community, I have to first trust and respect their intentions and also know that they trust and respect mine. As Sebastian Junger said, “The easiest and most basic definition of community, of tribe, would be the group of people that you would both help feed and help defend.”
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh unless otherwise noted.
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