Happy Monday! Have you seen this clip from Dr. Who? Admittedly, I've never watched the show before, but came across this clip on social media awhile back and it has stuck with me.

The Dr. has brought Vincent van Gogh (through time travel, of course) to an art gallery in Paris where he gets an emotional surprise seeing his paintings on display. In a beautiful bit of acting, the ever charming Bill Nighy plays an art historian who explains why Vincent van Gogh might just be the most masterful painter of all time. It's an incredibly moving moment where Vincent, who only ever sold one painting (out of 900!) during his lifetime, and considered himself a failure, gets to finally get a sense of how much his art has affected people all around the world. It's a moment where someone who feared he had failed realizes that he is having more impact than he ever could have imagined.

Isn't that what every single one of us wants? To know that our creativity matters? That the things we do and make and say affect other people for good? This clip made me cry and I'm not embarrassed to admit that it's because so often, I fear that I might be failing somehow. Failing to make enough, to be enough, to have my work experienced by enough people to make a difference.  But value and worth are more than just blog traffic statistics and book deals and I believe that what I am doing does matter. What you are doing matters as well. We're all like pebbles being tossed into the same pond. Everything we do causes ripples in the water, some that we can see and others we can't. Energy is exchanged and shifted and we are never the same. 

Today's Motivation Monday assignment is twofold: 

1. Watch the clip below. Prepare to cry ugly tears like I did or at least get a bit weepy. 

2. Write a thank you to your creative heroes. They might be best selling authors and they might be your very own friends. It all counts. Too often, we let people pass on before we let them know what they mean to us, how they inspire us, and that the world is brighter because they are here. Text, email, call, tag them on Facebook, send them snail mail or an owl. Get the message out any way you can.  You could change the way someone feels about themselves and the work they feel called to do in this world, and that could make all the difference.

Who you are matters. What you are doing is affecting the world. I'm glad you're here. 

To me, an artist is anyone
who collects the bits of broken pieces of heart,
the shiny slivers of joy and love you feel for anything
(be it a person or a really good piece of pizza)
who harnesses the velocity of the blood in your veins
that is proof that you are real,
And makes a mosaic of these things
that don't seem to belong
and yet fit just right together.
If you are in the habit of walking in the world
however you are, whoever you are,
in all your in-progress glory
and in all your glorious wholeness (because it's "and", not "or")
You are both artist and masterpiece.
 
(Poem inspired by thinking of what it means to be an artist--that word can be complicated. At best it fails to capture what it means to be creative and at worst, it turns people off and relies on the idea that the title must be given to you once you "earn" it.  We are going to take a much deeper dive into this in a future post, so get ready!)

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I have an incredibly hard time starting a new adventure because all I can think about are all the steps I need to take to get to my end goal. When I think about writing and filming the movie I've always dreamed about making, I don't ever begin with the first step, which would probably be thinking about what I want my movie to be about. Nope. I deep dive into step #202, which is to secure a boom operator, and even freak out about step #348, which is make sure the craft services table has a gluten-free option. 

What's that? I'm jumping waaaay ahead of myself? Who, me? 

I have listened to the RobCast for a few years now and the host Rob Bell, who finds joy in exploring what it means to be human, has offered some of the best advice ever when it comes to getting started on a goal. 

If Rob were here to hear me fret over the lunch options for my film set, I'd imagine the question he might ask me is "Lunch? How about a script? Or an idea for the script? Do you have that yet?"

And most of the time I'd have to answer "No." Then I'd be hit with a really hard truth to swallow. I think I so often skip to step #202 or 348 because step #1 scares the daylights out of me.  When I leap ahead and make excuses about my non-existent film set and the issues we are having with the catering company, I don't have to deal with what is right here in front of me--or what doesn't yet exist. What I still need to make and to do to move forward with this dream.

This summer, I've been working on taking the next step, my personal step #1 and working on a screenplay. My mind gets jittery often and wants to sprint to the finish, but the truth is that we can't get to the top of the staircase if none of the stairs are built yet. To build our dream, we must start with step #1--which Rob Bell also points out is often the most unsexy step. For me and the movie I am dreaming of bringing into the world, it's not a press release or an interview at Sundance. It's a quiet, unassuming writing session in my apartment where I will probably drink a cup of chamomile tea and squirm in my seat and try to find the magic way to shimmy up to the top of the creative ladder, a la finding a secret cotton candy staircase that launches you to the winning space on a Candyland board game. It's realizing that there are no shortcuts to being creative, just showing up as often as you can with a spirit that says "I'm here. I'm open. I'm willing to do the work and the play and fail big and surprise myself in the best of ways."

What are you dreaming of? What is your step #1? Is it something you can get started on today? 

I love cemeteries. I took this photo of a cemetery while I was running a 5K race in Upstate NY last month. Yup. I stopped running to capture this photo as onlookers looked at me like I was nuts. I was sweating and my heart was pounding and my legs were throbbing and my breath was fast and when I ran by the cemetery, I just stopped: "I am alive and someday, I will die. But right now, I am alive." What a wonderful discovery to make.

I love visiting cemeteries whenever I have a big life decision to make. I love visiting when I have something I really want to do, a leap I want to take, but I feel scared. When I visit a cemetery during these times, it evokes questions that allow me to reflect on the life I am creating. For example, last summer, before I taught my first class at Emerson, I biked by a cemetery in Cambridge. I felt nervous about teaching and my fear had started me thinking I might not even want to take that risk. Was it worth feeling anxious, inadequate, and confronting my inner critic day after day for the whole semester?

When I biked by the cemetery, a voice inside of me said "I have to teach this class. I MUST."

See, taking a moment to be cognizant of the fact that someday, you will die, helps to throw your life into sharp relief. It helps to put things in perspective. When I imagine being on my deathbed or think about my name on a headstone, I think: When I'm dying, will I wish I had taken the risk of teaching (or performing or writing or loving or getting on that freaking airplane, etc., etc.)? Even if it involves hard work and anxiety and sweat and doubt and people telling me I'm no good at it, will I wish I had done it?

"YES."

For me, teaching was one of those things that evoked this answer. And this summer, when passed by this cemetery during the 5K race, I asked myself these questions about the short film I am writing. When I'm dying someday, will I wish I had made this movie?

YES.

Try it out. Sometimes you will get this YES and other times, you'll get a NO. Which is just as helpful as the YES, because unless we say NO to things that we don't feel strongly about, we won't ever have the energy and heart and time to say YES to the things that really get us excited.

It's often hard to do this exercise in a cemetery where people you love rest, so try going to a cemetery in a different neighborhood, or in a different state. Try visiting a cemetery where one of the authors or actors or musicians or artists you admire is buried. I love visiting Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, MA where Louisa May Alcott is buried. It's a special experience that makes you realize that no matter what we spend on time here doing, we're all going to die someday, so it's critical that we do things that matter to us. When you doubt yourself, it's powerful to realize that even the "genius" that you admire and are convinced you could never compare to, had one chance at mortal life, just like you do now. There's no more excuses in the face of death.

I'm going to die. So are you. But if you are reading this right now, you are alive and can ask yourself a question.

"If I died today, what do I wish I would have done?"

Since you are alive, you can take a teeny tiny step towards that thing you see in your mind's eye and keep taking steps towards it as if your life depends on it. Because it actually does.

No one is getting out of this world alive.

Time is finite and is ticking away as I type this and as you read it.
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Best to make sure that when we do make our exit from this world, it's with the peace of knowing we were true to ourselves and with the ecstasy of having spent our souls on something that set them on fire.