Elizabeth Gilbert, on the Good Life Project podcast:
Loading Likes...I always say this, because I always marvel at this: Any act of pure creativity is the most irrational thing you can possibly do with your time. You’re going to have an existential crisis, because it doesn’t make any sense.
Let me break it down to you, what this guy is about to do; if he says “yes” to the thing that ignited him. He’s about to take the single most precious thing he possesses: which is his time. We’re mortal. We have a very short amount of time here. And how you spend that time matters. And what you give it to has enormous consequences in your life. We’re deeply aware of the ticking clock.
He’s going to take the one thing that can never be replaced — which is his hours and days and months of his short mortal life — and he’s going to devote an enormous amount of energy and resources and power and trouble to creating something that nobody wants or needs. That nobody has asked him to do. It is a fundamentally really weird thing to do.
So, why in the world would you do that?
And I guess it’s because, when the moment that you do leave the party comes, you’re not going to be lying in your bed saying: “Man… it was so short, my visit here on Earth. Why didn’t I do the thing that ignited me to life? Because that was actually the only thing. And the rest of it, and all those rational ideas of stuff that was more important, I don’t even remember what that stuff is now. Why didn’t I do that thing? Why didn’t I do that thing I was called to do?”
I never want to be in that position. I want to be in the position where I can say: “I did all that stuff. I said yes again and again and again… to the irrational plan, rather than the rational one.”