It Ends Up Being So Much Less

In one of my favorite movies of all times, The Hours, there is this one line, "No matter what you start with it ends up being so much less".  It is said in regards to the fact that the character, a writer, feels that all of his life's work has utterly failed at capturing the beauty of a moment, or the poignancy of life itself.

I think this is an all too familiar sensation, regardless of whether you are a writer or even an "artist".  You don't have to play an instrument or own a paint set to be an artist.  You don't even have to be creative- you simply have to create with passion.  And I think that's something most of us do at various points in life.  We find something we are passionate about and we set to the task of trying to bring life to it.  Usually, these tasks are set upon with a sense of youthful idealism.

At one point in life I dreamed of writing the next great American novel.  My father probably dreamed of being a rock star.  My friends may have dreamed of changing the American political system.  I think of this idealism- this divinely human instinct to want to create something new and unique- and I realize it is a source of either great pain or great happiness. 

When that which we try to create falls to dust; when we fail to achieve our goals; when we fail to give life to something new- that is when we often feel acute depression.  Often times, when we fail, we quit.  We say "this isn't for me" or "I was being idealist" or we may even laugh at ourselves.  I believe this is a recipe for an passionless existence.

One thing I've learned from my various investigations into Buddhism is that life is really what we perceive it to be.  Things are not innately bad or good, we only perceive them to be so.  Failure is a very good example of this.  We have all heard the inspirational stories of how someone failed 10,000 times before they were incredibly successful.  But that should not be the reason to keep trying in and of itself- you should keep trying because of the happiness it brings you.

True, with most endeavors to create, "it ends up being so much less".  Whether it was a software you were developing, or a community organization, or a piece of artwork- it often happens that in the process of creating something goes awry and you don't end up with what we started with.  But remember that feeling of joy you had when your work began, when you were optimistic and saw infinite potential in your ideas.  Try to recapture that each time you try again, so that even if you never become the typical "success story", your life will have been passionate and filled with its own successes.