Watch small children and see how seriously they take their play. In fact, play is how we first learn and through it we find delicious joy in the unexpected. How delighted children are when their “play” leads to new understanding.
Creative people never lose joy in their play.
Not that our creative work is always a big joy ride. It’s hard work, often frustrating, but in the end, why do we do it if, ultimately, we can’t find fun? Which is why, for example, writing in the white heat is so fantastic. Because the outer reality no longer has any pull and we are immersed in the mystery.
Katherine Anne Porter put is this way: “Perhaps in time I shall learn to live more deeply and consistently in that undistracted center of being where the will does not intrude, and the sense of time passing is lost, or has no power over the imagination.”
No matter that we, like Katherine Anne Porter, “yearn for that undistracted center of being where the will does not intrude,” it is often the hardest destination to reach, precisely because it requires an act of faith.
When seriousness is a drag...
