A Life of Creativity and Empathy

This morning, I woke up and felt very aware that nothing was changing in my life today. I just wrapped up a long project, which should have felt more like a relief but didn’t. When you go to work, you get to go home once you’re finished. But when you work at home, when you finish, you get more home.

Why this was bothering me today of all days, I’m not sure. I’ve faced this dilemma before, though it’s been exasperated by the long stretches at home these last two years. To live and work and rest all in the same place is no easy thing. Today, I found myself envious of people who usually go to a workplace but have the day off at home, a complete shift from one place to the next.

These last months, I’ve been pressing harder into change—not just easy changes like diet or exercise or developing a morning routine. What I want to change is deeply rooted, things I’ve been doing for so long I’ve stopped questioning them. They’re the kind of things that are scary to question because they might just upend my whole life.

But after you’ve backed yourself in a corner long enough or been trapped by self or circumstance, after you’ve worn yourself out trying to keep going like this just a little longer, you have two choices: give up or make a change.

The main question I’m encountering, among all the tiny and not-so-tiny questions, is this: how do I want to live? I think I’ve been asking myself that all along, but I’m realizing more and more that isn’t true. One choice has led to another and another. One yes or no has closed a dozen doors, many invisible.

Meanwhile I’ve tried to become more efficient, streamlining and essentializing my life until there’s no wiggle room. Until all the joy has been squeezed out and all that’s left is efficiency and duty. Reducing everything to the bare bones strips away all the possibility and spontaneity that can make life worthwhile. Putting all your eggs in one basket makes for a joy-less life.

Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s me who needs to have all that wiggle room, that freedom that lets me make a mess without worrying all the time if I’m getting it right. What does it mean to have fun anymore? To embrace joy? What gives flesh to these bare bones?

Maybe what I want to say is, if I live a small life that’s been reduced to the essentials, it’s closing the door for the non-essentials, these things that make my life a life. I’ve had plenty of worry about time and work, but I also need more play and messiness and rest.

Maybe the things I’ve thought were so important for such a long time actually aren’t. Maybe that realization is part of getting older and gaining perspective.

Or, again, maybe it’s just me.

The other day I was reading about the future of the job market and the movement toward more automation and artificial intelligence, both of which are siphoning away jobs. So many jobs can be automated now, which seems pragmatic and logical. Except that machines or AI could never be human. They’re not made of the stuff that human beings are made of, like creativity and empathy.

Creativity and empathy can’t be replicated by a machine. In the future, jobs that encompass these elements will have less threat of elimination because machines can’t think thoughts or feel feelings.

I mentioned this to a friend, about creativity and empathy, and she remarked that those are two things are so devalued in our society. Jobs that incorporate creativity and empathy tend to be ones that earn the lowest pay or are generally treated as non-essential (artists) or perfunctory (caretakers).

What place does creativity or empathy have in the marketplace? This is a good question, one that stirs me up as an artist and a mother who holds both of these in equal part daily. We know, ultimately, that who we are is more important than what we can produce or earn, that our essential core humanness is worthwhile simply because we exist. And yet we live in a system that rewards productivity and status above all. Not our capacity for creativity or empathy, not our identity as human beings.

I keep thinking about all of this as I ask my most essential questions: Not only how do I want to live my life, but how do I want to live my life with creativity and empathy?

Let me be honest: I’m tired of trying to prove myself all the time. I’m tired of working within a system that’s filled with carrots and sticks and cheap yet endless advice. A system that’s devoid of joy. I don’t want to be a robot or replaced by one.

This question about creativity and empathy, which is really about human connection, is at the heart of so many things that have troubled me recently. It’s at the root of this feeling of being stuck and trapped. It’s at the root of my envy for people who leave their houses every day, who get to have a workplace and a home space, instead of all these blurry edges.

So, I keep questioning everything with my heart and hands open, asking what this thing, whatever it is—my identity, work, community, and my own definitions—means to me. What feels like me? What fits now?

I believe in the power of good questions. Learning to ask better questions is a skill we can all use, one that leads us toward the examined life, the life worth living. Not just the question of why this is happening, but what it means, and what it’s telling me about myself and the world. With no questions and nothing but the face value of faceless things, what are we left with?

It’s okay to lose our way and lose it again, to try different things and succeed or fail. Our lives are meandering journeys, not perfectly straight lines and right angles. What matters is finding our way back, asking the right questions and accepting even the hardest of answers.

If we believe in personal growth and evolution and change, it requires a willingness to let go of the old to make space for something new. Especially old things we’re clinging too tightly to.

When I’m gripping too tightly, I need to ask why. What would happen if I didn’t hold this with such a tight fist? What if it’s not mine to hold?

In Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer writes about what it means to be our true selves. He advocates that we must listen to what our lives are telling us so that we can live authentically. Who were made to be, our true self, is what we should be aiming for. Not appeasing our egos and approval-driven nature. To illustrate this point, he tells this story:

“There is a Hasidic tale that reveals, with amazing brevity, both the universal tendency to want to be someone else and the ultimate importance of becoming one’s self: Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, ‘In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?’”

How do I want to live my life? How can I be more creative and empathetic? I will keep asking myself these questions again and again, measuring and weighing and keeping the grip of my hands loose, the burden of my heart light, taking the days as they come.

Whether at home or out in the world, working or resting or playing, I can take what’s given to me and always, always hold it up to the light. If this is for me, I can keep it. If not, I’m free to let it go.