When you find yourself at the fork in the road, take the way you wish to go and stick with it. Though both paths are bound to lead somewhere, one will take you absolutely nowhere, the other, quite possibly to places far greater than you ever imagined.
THE ROAD TO SOMEWHERE
To stick to the creative path you're on is the only way to go, but sometimes you do need to slow down, take a breather, and spend more of your energy on yourself and not to seek anything from anyone else's energy, but to provide more of what you are able to creatively provide to yourself. This is the right way to move on full steam ahead.
To think you chose the wrong way is to cling to doubt, to think one needs to learn something from it, to want to chalk it up to taking the wrong way is just an excuse to turn around, to squeeze all of the hope out of doubt, to do this conscientiously is to really give up and stop creatively thriving altogether. Doubt is doubt, and we all have bouts of it, it's confusing as all hell, but that's all it is, a hazy shitstorm of confusion.
So take a deep hopeful breath and move the fuck on.
It is to stop fixing one’s attention and one’s thirst for knowing what the end results will be when we get to where we're creatively going that will allow us to always feel fullfilled instead of feeling like we're running on empty. It is to know and believe we are on the right path that sheer will itself, helps keep us going and believing that there is no giving up and there never will be. It's is okay to slow down every now and again. Slowing down and rest and stillness are what help us to realize how content we are with the choices we've made, but one does not always know this is so until one has slowed down and well rested enough to know the lesson is learned.
To take a bit of a breather at the right time though: to recollect your thoughts, to see through the artistic smoke and mirrors of one's self, this is the only way to keep moving forward full steam ahead with the creative vision one has always had.
“The less one wants, the more one has got." There is no need to wish for more just slow down and keep moving forward.“
One creative foot in front of the other. Practice this philosophy from here on out.
FULL STEAM AHEAD
There was a time when we all wanted to make a difference in this fallen and fucking divided world.
It was towards the end of my adolescence when I thought I should try and express only half of what I “really” felt through the medium of poetry and writing. The reason was both simple and difficult, and knowing me and my stubborn ass, one may never know the definitive reason as to my ways and means pertaining to creativity. But you can bet your pretty little ass that it all most likely all started from a place of deep seated darkness and pain.
Either way, this was at which point I discovered that I had turned into someone incapable of expressing more than half of what I felt to others around me.
So I quit writing altogether.
Then it came again—from out of nowhere one morning and towards the end of my thirties—the passionate desire to to express myself and my emotions through creative outlets akin to photography, poetry and just as well, writing at length about things that inspire me. Maybe in order to somewhat exert some artistically charged spiritual prowess and offer inspirational mularkey to others lost upon this place from my own intricate and rambling thoughts.
This was some seven odd years ago almost to the day—mind you.
This time it was different though, it went deeper, “a“ whole helluva lot more poetic and deeper. And the reason for me getting in the habit of writing again did not come from a place of pain, but instead somewhere much deeper down in the depths of my old lost soul.
Something not of this world had grabbed a hold of me, or called to me so to speak. It was as existential as a silly crisis as it was divinely ridiculous. It was a need for some kind of greater purpose that will most likely never be able to be fully understood within the short sighted definition of my own self-subjectivity.
Was it right of me though, to walk away from everything that I had known in my life, to seek said greater purpose in my own creative solitude, to create my own path, the path in which place I still haven’t a little clue as to where it will lead, even to this day?
I truly believe so, as it's the way that was meant for me.
Really though, the aforementioned question is nothing more than an open-ended one that I often ask myself in order to keep things in my confident state of creative being firing on all cylinders as I'm writing this post.
Call it it filler if you will;)
It's really just a question that somewhat helps to declutter all the thoughts stuffed in loosely with fear and doubt smack dab in between happiness and hope inside the commemorative filing cabinet I call my wild and wandering mind.
And yet—albeit miraculously—here I sit still writing to this day, years have past, and here I barely am, employing my conscious demeanor the best I know how, with my heart on my sleeve, and always something sweet and smartass to say about something both poetically pointless and romantically meaningful to me all the same, all the while living in a lifelong dream that I mean to keep weaving with creativity in my own little way.
A MEANINGFUL CHOICE
I have become much more aware in my old age that the creative ends no longer justify the means. Because there are no ends, there are only means.
And the creative means, believe you me folks, in the end, are the best fucking part.
Because to live a creative life means to carry us with grace from one unknown—be it a blessing or a curse—to the next. The path is the path I chose and I hold no regrets over most of the choices I've made.
Each moment of my life has filled with marvelous mystery and magic just the same, and even though, I do know where exactly it is I’m coming from, I do not know where and the hell it is I am supposed to be going.
This my friends, is what the creative journey has always been about. This is what makes it all so exciting and rather terrifying just as well.
And still I kneel and pray every single morning after I wake up that this may be the day that I finally learn how to stay out of my own damn way and let the path lead me where it may.
THE TRUTH IS
I now know that if I only think of the creative goal—or the ends, if you so wish to see it that way.—I am nowhere near able enough to pay attention to the subtle signs that the universe shares with me along the way by placing what is meant to be right in front of me. It's just the same that if I only concentrate on all the questions I have about the meaning of my life and it's creative purpose, I will never hear with clarity the answers that has always been right here in the ringing within me, and my ears every so often.
This is why I will forever surrender myself to the great creative unknown of weaving my own path because, and I know it sounds an awful lot like a cliche, but the only way out it is through the truth.
I have no choice but to keep going, or else I may never know where my creative choices have forever been meant to lead me.
And that is a “what if” I would rather not wish to ask myself when I’m old and grey.
“WHEN THE TIME COMES TO KEEP GOING, ONE MUST KEEP ON KEEPING ON WITHOUT THE WORRY OF WHAT COMES NEXT.“
Sometimes you have to wonder though, I mean really fucking wonder, we are all aware that we choose our own reality and we always have a choice, but how much is cosmic fate truly involved? And if cosmic fate is more involved than we give it credit for, is it not what it is that opens the gate to the path that sets things straight?
See there's always a creative fork in the road and there are plenty of preordained paths that are meant to be equally fruitful.
In fact, there are hundreds upon thousands of fruitful paths that one could choose as this way, that way, or even another way—there’s always a good chance within a confident choice when headed in the right direction, and it’s true that chance is the only constant in this crazy little thing called life and our little pursuit of happiness and/or unabbreviated bliss.
THE PURSUIT
And so it is, to choose to unconditionally love one another, myself included, with constancy and consistency more than it is anything else. And to make the right choice of which path to take via heartfelt—maybe even gut—instinct, is indeed, the only path that will lead us to the places we are meant to be.
And oh, the places the soul will go when making that choice so clear...
"WHEN IT COMES TO THE FORK IN THE ROAD, YOUR HEART ALWAYS KNOWS THE ANSWER, NOT YOUR MIND”
So at this critical artistic juncture in my life, at this fork in the road on the creative plane of me, there is only one question to ask.
What does makes love stick around?
No other question carries any relevance. No other question has as much meaning to my heart whatsoever. No, there is never going to be any other question in my life as important to my very own creative soul...
So I’d be the first to guess that I have to mosey my way back into the wilderness of where it all began...and that is within.
But for now, we catch our breath.
Maybe even nap in her shade for a spell or two;)
Til the next time.
Yours Truly,
Ryan Love
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