Inspiration

Today, while going through my blog reader, I came across this post, and the quotation (by George Bernard Shaw) pretty much changed my life.

"Life is not about finding yourself, life is about creating yourself."

(Emphasis added)

So, now I'm just trying to decide which version of my life I'm going to set about creating...

Gleaning Wisdon from 6 Billion Others

I went to the 6 Billion Others website today to see if I could find out how much tickets are for the exhibit (I can't wait to go!!), but instead found inspiration from one of the videos.

"We don't choose where we are born, but we choose who we want to become."

This year...

I'm going to live by this wonderful quote from Eleanor Roosevelt:

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.

What's That You Say?

Today I came across this quote, and it made me chuckle so I thought I would share. It reminds me of all the literary theory articles I had to read in college.

In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.
-George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”

The Challenging Pleasures of Art

In the September/October newsletter from the Orem Public Library, they included an excerpt from Dana Gioia’s commencement address at Stanford in June. Gioia is the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. His address really resonated with me, so I thought I would share parts of it with you (with emphasis added in multiple places). You can find the entire text here.
Please note: This is not me preaching... I just found myself agreeing almost out loud with so much of what he said, I wanted to pass along the thoughts that he so aptly conveyed.

Marcus Aurelius believed that the course of wisdom consisted of learning to trade easy pleasures for more complex and challenging ones. I worry about a culture that bit by bit trades off the challenging pleasures of art for the easy comforts of entertainment. And that is exactly what is happening—not just in the media, but in our schools and civic life.

Entertainment promises us a predictable pleasure—humor, thrills, emotional titillation, or even the odd delight of being vicariously terrified. It exploits and manipulates who we are rather than challenges us with a vision of who we might become. A child who spends a month mastering Halo or NBA Live on Xbox has not been awakened and transformed the way that child would be spending the time rehearsing a play or learning to draw.

If you don't believe me, you should read the statistical studies that are now coming out about American civic participation. Our country is dividing into two distinct behavioral groups. One group spends most of its free time sitting at home as passive consumers of electronic entertainment. Even family communication is breaking down as members increasingly spend their time alone, staring at their individual screens.

The other group also uses and enjoys the new technology, but these individuals balance it with a broader range of activities. They go out—to exercise, play sports, volunteer and do charity work at about three times the level of the first group. By every measure they are vastly more active and socially engaged than the first group.

What is the defining difference between passive and active citizens? Curiously, it isn't income, geography, or even education. It depends on whether or not they read for pleasure and participate in the arts. These cultural activities seem to awaken a heightened sense of individual awareness and social responsibility.

Art is an irreplaceable way of understanding and expressing the world—equal to but distinct from scientific and conceptual methods. Art addresses us in the fullness of our being—simultaneously speaking to our intellect, emotions, intuition, imagination, memory, and physical senses. There are some truths about life that can be expressed only as stories, or songs, or images.

Art delights, instructs, consoles. It educates our emotions. And it remembers. As Robert Frost once said about poetry, "It is a way of remembering that which it would impoverish us to forget." Art awakens, enlarges, refines, and restores our humanity.

You don't outgrow art.

The Best Day of Your Life...

...is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift of life is yours; it is an amazing journey; and you alone are responsible for the quallity of it.
- Dan Zadra