Friend of My Mind

~ Live & Learn

Often when he was starting a new project, he didn’t know what was driving him, as if his thoughts had developed an independent life and a will of their own, as if they were merely waiting for him to finally think them, as if an investigation he was about to begin already existed before he had started working on it, and the path leading through everything he knew and saw, everything he encountered and experienced, already lay there waiting for him to venture down it. And probably that’s just how it was, given that you could only ever find what was already there.

Because everything is always already there.

~ Jenny Erpenbeck, Go, Went, Gone

Notes:

  • Post title “lifted” and post inspired by two quotes found in Beth’s post on “Alive on All Channels” titled a Friend of My Mind:
  • Martha Beck: “Think of a problem that’s had you stumped for a while: Your preschooler won’t nap, you can’ make yourself exercise, you need to cut expenses without sacrificing quality of life. With this challenge in your mind, read a few paragraphs in several totally unrelated books. Then relax. Play with your cat, wash the dishes, watch the neighbors through binoculars. Think of the problem periodically, then drop it again. This process encourages eureka epiphanies, like those moments in TV dramas where the brilliant doctor or sleuth gets the “ping” of insight that solves the case. Your first few ideas may not be perfect—many will be awful—but there are more where they came from. Once you begin encouraging the right brain to churn out solutions, it will do so more and more abundantly.”
  • Kathryn Schulz: On being wrong, TED talk [12:00-12:17]: “The miracle of your mind isn’t that you can see the world as it is, but that you can see the world as it isn’t. We can remember the past and we can think about the future, and we can imagine what it’s like to be some other person in some other place. And we all do this differently.”
  • Art: Francesco Clemente with “Friendship“ (via Your Eyes Blaze Out)

22 thoughts on “Friend of My Mind”

  4. This, increasingly, is how my own designs evolve. The trick is to not fight the path, but to rejoice.
    I shared this wonderful quote today with my Fb friends, many of whom are artists.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  8. Agreed, everything is already there. I’ve often said there is nothing new under the sun. We are sparked by inspiration and rearrange some atoms and hatch out a ‘new’ idea. (An idea that is uniquely stamped with our knowledge and experience, making it unique but not new, per se.) Even the discovery of the atom, itself had to have been apparent; only undiscovered at that time.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  9. Dave,
    As it is with wind, the movement of air. God, not man, brought moving air into existence. But, man, like the bird who knows how to build a nest never having been taught, also possesses the innate ability to one day have dawn upon him that this wind had power and could be harnessed. So he, by his God – shared creative inheritance, invented the sail and conquered the seas.
    -Alan

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  10. I need to write this post and the two inspiration quotes on flash cards and keep them in my purse!
    Everyone around me needs the reminder these days!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  11. looked back and see what I missed…glad I saw…and, as said by the wise, “it was always there!” We are always there. If we allow us to just be.
    as usual, thank you for sharing the profound and beautiful, David!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a Reply