Introduction:
The Song No One Can Sing But You:
Creating A Life, Doing Creative Work, On Your Own Terms

All that matters is what you love
and what you love is who you are . . .
- This Ecstasy, John Squadra

An artist must walk his own path, and if there are rules,
they should only be rules that he himself has created.
- Gao Xingjian

This is not a book about achieving significant financial success as a road to happiness. Nor is the book attempt to advance the argument that money doesn’t matter. It does. It is good to have a car that is reliable and safe, to set aside money for retirement. It is good to have a financial reserve so that you can do your creative work without constant worry. It is good to have health insurance, and live comfortably. But this book is about living a different set of values than those of the dominant culture. It is about living a meaningful life. It is about using the opportunity life has given each of us to find inner success, inner peace and harmony, by using our uniqueness to contribute to the lives of others.

I don’t believe that serving others or contributing to the lives of others is necessarily the only path of meaning and inner harmony. We embark here on a mysterious journey into a mysterious world, and one that doesn’t lend itself to dictums, including from me. If living your life on you own terms means to you sailing alone around the world, that’s fine. Great, in fact. Count me among your admirers and someone who hopes our paths will cross someday. On that journey, you will need to maximize your energy, your inner momentum, to deal with the moods of the oceans, and your own moods as they relate to loneliness and fear. This book offers insights from adventurers who have chosen that life, but it is not my life, and so those are offered here only in passing.

My search, my struggle, has been for inner peace and harmony through work. In a sense it has been a search for a belief in my own beauty.  It is a beauty bigger than I am, and when I submerge myself in it, I sense that I have entered a holy realm. 

This book is about finding, and living, the unique path that can be yours alone. It is not necessarily the easy path. If it was, no one would work at the post office. And we need the post office. But if you have embarked, or are now ready to embark, on a path that involves risk, the path that therefore requires courage, in order to live a big life on your own terms, the journey worthy of the gift of life, this book is for you.  Let’s travel our separate paths together.

It is a sacred journey on which you will repeatedly bump up against your own weaknesses and shortcomings. Within those boundaries there is a vast territory where you will stretch, grow and experience satisfaction and meaning. It will require perseverance, self-discipline and you will learn from your mistakes. And you will make them. We all do.

Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in an dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials.
- Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Campbell will be a frequent companion, our patron saint, on our journey of embracing the adventure of life, the adventure of manifesting our unique beauty.

Sir  Laurens van der Post said to his film biographer, Mickey Lemle:

"There is nothing wrong in searching for happiness, but we use the term as if it were the ultimate in human striving. What gives far more comfort to the soul, I found in prison and in life, is something that is greater than happiness ... or unhappiness ... and that is meaning. Because meaning transfigures all. Once what you are living and what you are doing has for you meaning, it is irrelevant whether you are happy or unhappy. You are content. You are not alone in your spirit. You belong.

“The people of the desert talk of the two hungers. There is the little hunger of the belly, for food. But the greatest hunger of all is this hunger for meaning. The great hunger which they dance, and sing, and paint and tell stories about. Those things are the food for that hunger.”

The film was entitled Hasten Slowly: The Journey of Sir Laurens van der Post. The prison van der Post spoke of was the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in which he was interred in World War II. The people people of the desert were the Kalahari Bushmen of which he wrote in a number of books including The Lost World of the Kalahari.

Forty-three years ago, laying on my back in a park in downtown Toronto, staring at the sky, I began to wonder what my life would be like when I reached the age of 66. I pictured myself as being wiser, more balanced and self-aware than I was then at the age of twenty-six. I pictured myself as having gotten what I wanted to get out of life. I was living in a simple home with big windows back in the woods near a lake. I imagined that my average day included walks or paddles in wild nature, deep rest and creative work.

I then imagined a conversation with this person I hoped to become. I walked into his living room and sat down. The room was quiet. I asked him a question. He turned, looked over his shoulder out the window, got up and left without saying anything. He walked down to the shore of the lake, got in his canoe, and went out for an early evening paddle.

After thinking a while about this, I concluded that what he was saying to me was that a lot of the things that I thought were important, really weren't. The things that were preoccupying me in my mid-twenties had little to do with what would eventually prove to be important in my life. What was important, my future self was saying, was to orient myself and my life around quiet beauty, natural beauty.

I’ve often since turned to that image of my future self for advice. The answers I’ve gotten back have often been tough to take. He has directed me in directions I didn’t want to go. I’ve sometimes rejected the advice. I’ve often thought of my future self as Mr. Kill Joy. “I know you. You always opt for the route that is the least fun. You are kind of dull.” In retrospect, I was wrong. Following the advice offered, while it would have meant missed fun, would have generally meant avoiding wasted effort and heartache. On the other hand, a balanced life needs fun too.

I’ve generally had these imaginary conversations with an open journal in front of me so that I can write down the questions and the answers I get back. About half the time, I get little or no feedback, just as in the case of that first conversation forty years ago. A number of times the answers have led me in new directions, directions I hadn't considered before. In every instance that I can recall, when I followed the feedback offered, the new direction was exactly where I needed to go. Sometimes those new directions have made my heart sing.

And so, when I struggle with decisions and consider options, I talk to the wise older man who lives happy, in the woods. He always tells me to move toward harmony, balance. Avoid fights. Serve others with the best you have in you. Quiet beauty. He advocates quiet beauty. He tells me to create out of that place. Sometimes he calls it holy beauty. Serve the holy place of harmony and beauty. He says to me, “Manifest your own uniqueness.”

Had I followed his advice consistently, I’d probably be living as I imagined, all those years ago. I still have work to do. I’m still trying and sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing. The journey requires belief in yourself, confidence in yourself, the courage of conviction.

Every day presents another opportunity to get it right.

. . .

A random stream of conciousness from my journal on what we, as creative outsiders, need:

Connection with kindred spirits
Mastery, skill in some unique endeavor
Discipline
Detached perspective — ability to analyze your own situation
Creativity, imagination
Persistence.
Courage. To live life on your own terms you need to be a thoughtful risktaker.
A reserve. Actually, two reserves:
An energy reserve – don’t work to the point of exhaustion
Because when you do, everything starts to go south.
The gods, positive energy.
And a financial reserve – something to fall back on
So you can experiment, create
Without needing to sell your work to pay this month’s bills.
And so you can have downtime, time to reflect.
And let your creative friend, your mind, guide you.
It won’t guide you if you are rushed, desperate.

Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own
Yes, the strong get smart
While the weak ones fade
Empty pockets don't ever make the grade.
- Billie Holliday, from the song God Bless The Child.

That’s about it.
Fairly short list.
To get there, we need each other’s support,
Encouragement, friendship, honest feedback.

Ideas.

But most of all, friendship.
Positive energy united means one plus one equals three.

. . .

There is only one success — to be able to spend the rest of your life in your own way.
- Christopher Morley