Action and Momentum

Taking action to create something new, be it a new sport, a new job, or a painting, is one of the biggest steps we can take as human beings. We all know people who are incessantly starting something new, learning new skills, making new friends, seeking new horizons, and there is something enviable about them in many ways. They have moved beyond the ‘wouldn’t it be nice…’ stage of dreaming of a better way to live by putting their dreams in action. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes not. And they don’t seem to care either way. For many of us, trying something new, finding it’s not something we particularly like, and then abandoning it, is seen as failure, but that’s not true. As Thomas Edison said, ‘I have not failed. I have successfully discovered twelve hundred ideas that don’t work.’ By flipping the ‘failure’ paradigm this way, the work put into discovery—even unsuccessfully—is work that will guide us to a better way of doing something.

Taking steps to write a song, or a story, or perhaps to paint a picture, we enlist our unconscious mind, and suddenly we begin to think of new and different ways to create. Some work. Many do not. But all of them are teaching us discernment—what to leave in and what to take out—and we are able to make progress and take those lessons into the next idea that crosses our mind. The momentum we created pulls us along and the work itself becomes more exciting each time we come back to it. We may not finish this particular painting or story at the time, but what we have learned from its creation will go with us into the next project, and help inform our decisions in bringing something else to life. Even if we are only baking pre-prepared slice-off cookies, the very act of creating something is invigorating, and triggers so many positive things within us. Not taking any kind of action to fulfill a dream, or even just to bake cookies, leaves us feeling flat, as if we are procrastinating and letting life pass us by, rather than taking life’s hand and agreeing to dance, even if, especially if, we don’t know the dance steps. It’s more exhilarating to feel the rush of wind as your boat speeds down the river than it is to remain sitting on the dock. There is a time and a place for contemplation, perhaps while sitting on the dock, and there is a time to move, to act. We need both in our lives, each activity aiding the other: those hours of thought and reflection help us define what we want to do, before we begin to move toward it. It is the silence and contemplation that gives birth to the first step of a journey, the first few words of a story, or the opening bars of a song, that once begun, eventually take lives of their own, and we become passengers of our creation that is now fully-fledged and will show us the next steps to take in our quest.