October 30, 2009
moleskine tried meaningful 2
Hugh MacLeod
I'm a cartoonist.
I sell limited-edition prints.
I wrote a book.
I'm CEO of Stormhoek USA, which markets South African wine in the States.
I also draw private commissions.
Prints |
Opening | Current |
|---|---|---|
Bluetrain |
$900 | |
We Need to Talk |
$650 | |
Portfolio #2 |
$300 | |
NY NY |
$275 |
Ouch! This is so painfully true for so many people I know. I’m watching the squirrels outside of my window run around like crazy, picking up acorns and scurrying up the trees to stash them away. Is this a meaningful life? I suppose for squirrels, yes it is. For humans, it is (hopefully) more than mere survival that drives us. It can be pretty damn depressing when the failures seem to dominate – a tiny success once in a while would be nice.
You just described how all success is built.
[…] Hugh’s Trackback […]
Painful. I prefer a more hopeful message. Is that shallow? Is it a more hopefull message? Oh, gee
actually this seems mighty hopeful to me! I’d rather try to live a meaningful life and fail, than to just turn my brain off and follow instructions. I’d rather fail a million times trying to do something important, than not even try.
and I think the people who do the most meaningful things probably also feel a sense of failure a lot of the time. and I think they could be reminded, often, that their meaningful lives are succeeding, even if it feels like it’s not.
that’s what I got out of that, at any rate.
This is definitely a hopeful message. I can’t count how many failure feeling like times I’ve made it through after touching on the thought that, looking back on some of the coolest stuff I’ve done, a lot of the time doing them I felt like a failure.
In fact, I often was a failure, just a failure to someone else.
What better advice is there than just keep working at your art. Like the stock market, if you sell when the market is down, you lose. In art if you keep working thoughtfully, hopefully you’ll succeed. That’s how I feel anyway. Both you and Hazel really give frank insights into pressing ahead. Thanks. Errol.
Failure is not doing.
“From the viewpoint of absolute truth, what we feel and experience in our ordinary daily life is all delusion. Of all the various delusions, the sense of discrimination between oneself and others is the worst form, as it creates nothing but unpleasant.” — Tenzin Gyatso