Your Idea is Growing Up!
Somehow we break through. The particular depth and darkness of the valley sometimes feels impenetrable. It almost breaks us. And in some real ways we need it to break us. It can be terribly unpleasant and feel like a permanent state. It is not.
Dying is not easy. It’s not supposed to be. But unless you die (to certain ways of thinking, certain habits, certain ways of doing things), you can never really live. Life will stop feeling alive. You can avoid dying. But you end up losing.
Go through the process. It sucks. It’s hard. But its worthwhile. Endure your crisis. There is something totally worth it on the other side. Dying doesn’t last forever. New life emerges. Spring comes. We are reborn. New life happens. Wait and see.
And when you start to get out on the other side it will seem but a distant memory. The joy of new discovery is as palatable as birth. A new child. Newness of life.
Be it an idea, a creative project, a hope being realized, once we get birth to this new “child,” it needs to make its appearance to the world. We, at least, have the responsibility to try.
But our tendency, after a birth, is to over-think and over-protect our infant idea. We don’t want anyone’s dirty hands on our precious baby. But at some point that baby has to be shown, grow up and get strong. At some point, we have to allow others into our idea or project.
Certainly not everyone will get it. Some will smile awkwardly and pass. Some will tell you, with a sort of twisted earnestness, why it can’t work, and how many others tried and failed.
And perhaps worse yet, some will not even care.
Yet, in all that, not one of those reactions actually changes a single thing about the idea. Prepare for that, and you take away any life-negating power. People are entitled to an opinion. Or lack thereof.
Move on. Let the idea see some daylight; it is the only way it can start to grow. It doesn’t mean we show every stranger we meet, but it does mean we start showing. We deliberately begin to let go. To allow for the freedom. We open the lid, and break the seal once for all.
But children are called “dependents” for a reason. And parenting might just be the perfect metaphor for “raising” an idea or project into a full-fledged creative pursuit.
Because like a child, an idea starts as an infant, but has to grow.
Think of it: for the first 2-3 years of life a child is almost completely dependent or helpless. Without the direct care and intervention of parents, they die. Our big ideas and dreams are no different. We must cultivate, sing to, feed, protect, and yet slowly expose to the world. Soon they start to grow.
Pretty soon our baby becomes a toddler.
When you are with the baby day after day after day you can hardly recognize the development. Growth happens so slowly. But it is happening. That is the beauty. It is happening. And will continue to happen. Someone who has not seen a toddler in a few months sees the change.
It is slow, but development IS happening.
Care-taking your ideas is similar. Slow growth is never easy. Letting your project “go public” can be horrifying (like that first day of Kindergarten). But, similar to parenting, the goal is not to keep your children around (living in the basement ;-). The goal is to set them free.
Children have to grow up (or become something very strange and barely human).
They have a life to live. So do our best creative ideas. When we push into the world, we are part of something bigger than ourselves. We are part of seeing something new coming into existence. We can leave our mark on history. Not so much because we care about leaving a mark, but because we care about people.
And great ideas help people!
Great ideas are bigger than us, and if one has really been entrusted to you, push it into its future. Be part of something transcedant — a moment, a movement, a community of those willing to, as TS Elliot wrote, “raid on the inarticulate” and try, because, in the end, “for us, there is only the trying.”
