The Creative Act: A Way of Being

by Rick Rubin

To create is to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before. It could be a conversation, the solution to a problem, a note to a friend, the rearrangement of furniture in a room, a new route home to avoid a traffic jam.

Through the ordinary state of being, we’re already creators in the most profound way, creating our experience of reality and composing the world we perceive.

If something strikes me as interesting or beautiful, first I live that experience. Only afterward might I attempt to understand it.

The more raw data we can take in, and the less we shape it, the closer we get to nature.

You may be able to think less and begin to rely on answers arising within you.

available to us and we have a limited bandwidth to conserve, we might consider carefully curating the quality of what we allow in.

Oscar Wilde said that some things are too important to be taken seriously.

In Japanese pottery, there’s an artful form of repair called kintsugi. When a piece of ceramic pottery breaks, rather than trying to restore it to its original condition, the artisan accentuates the fault by using gold to fill the crack. This beautifully draws attention to where the work was broken, creating a golden vein. Instead of the flaw diminishing the work, it becomes a focal point, an area of both physical and aesthetic strength.

A full, imperfect version is generally more helpful than a seemingly perfect fragment.

As if catching fish, we walk to the water, bait the hook, cast the line, and patiently wait. We cannot control the fish, only the presence of our line.

Base decisions on the internal feeling of being moved and notice what holds your interest.

It’s a symbiotic loop. The culture informs who you are. And who you are informs your work. Your work then feeds back into the culture.