As for having reached the top, with only one way to go from there, Lee had a point, no? I mean, if you cannot repeat a once-in-a-lifetime miracle-if you can never again reach the top-then why bother creating at all? Well, I can actually speak about this predicament from personal experience, because I myself was once "at the top"-with a book that sat on the bestseller list for more than three years. I can't tell you how many people said to me during those years, "How are you ever going to top that?" They'd speak of my great good fortune as though it were a curse, not a blessing, and would speculate about how terrified I must feel at the prospect of not being able to reach such phenomenal heights again. But such thinking assumes there is a "top"-and that reaching that top {and staying there} is the only motive one has to create. Such thinking assumes that the mysteries of inspiration operate on the same scale that we do-on a limited human scale of success and failure, of winning and losing, of comparison and competition, of commerce and reputation, of units sold and influence wielded. Such thinking assumes that you must be constantly victorious-not only against your peers, but also against an earlier version of your own poor self. Most dangerously of all, such thinking assumes that if you cannot win, then you must not continue to play. But what does any of that have to do with vocation? What does any of that have to do with the pursuit of love? What does any of that have to do with the strange communion between the human and the magical? What does any of that have to do with faith? What does any of that have to do with the quiet glory of merely making things, and then sharing those things with an open heart and no expectations?
( Elizabeth Gilbert )
[ Big Magic: Creative Living ]
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