Rick Rubin

Use what’s helpful.
Let go of the rest.

Creativity is not a rare ability. It is not difficult to access. Creativity is a fundamental aspect of being human. It’s our birthright. And it’s for all of us.

To create is to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before. It could be a conversation, the solution to a problem, a note to a friend, the rearrangement of furniture in a room, a new route home to avoid a traffic jam.

Just as trees grow flowers and fruits, humanity creates works of art. The Golden Gate Bridge, the White Album, Guernica, Hagia Sophia, the Sphinx, the space shuttle, the Autobahn, “Clair de lune,” the Colosseum in Rome, the Phillips screwdriver, the iPad, Philadelphia cheesesteak.

There’s a time for certain ideas to arrive,
and they find a way
to express themselves through us.

In most of our daily activities we choose the agenda and develop a strategy to achieve the goal at hand. We create the program.
Awareness moves differently. The program is happening around us. The world is the doer and we are the witness. We have little or no control over the content.

We don’t have to understand nature to appreciate it. This is true of all things. Simply be aware of moments when your breath gets taken away by something of great beauty.

It may be witnessing a single-line formation of birds snaking through a half-lit evening sky, or standing awed at the foot of a giant redwood tree that’s thousands of years old. There’s so much wisdom in nature that when we notice it, it awakens possibility within us. It is through communing with nature that we move closer to our own nature.

Think of the universe as an eternal creative unfolding.