Tell Me Lies

Think Tank #4

What lies do you tell yourself to get through the day?

When you’re struggling to pry yourself out of bed, do you steel yourself like a soldier, tell yourself that the world needs you, that you’re the hero of your story fighting your day’s first agonizing battle?

When you’re sitting down at your laptop or notebook or easel or wherever your most noble pursuits lie, do you tell yourself that this—the thing you’re working on right now—is the most important work that you’ll ever do?

When I’m frustrated or in need of inspiration, I read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. It’s a little book—it usually only takes about a day or two to read. I’ve gone through it several times, and it still manages to drag me out of whatever rut I’m stuck in.

The book examines the concept of ‘resistance’: a physical force of nature whose main goal is to stop you from doing the creative work that you are destined to do. Resistance will stop you by any means necessary—fear, procrastination, illness, addiction. It’s a shapeshifter; it changes form. You can drink resistance, smoke resistance, eat resistance. Whatever distracts you, paralyzes you, keeps you stagnant and down and unhappy—that’s resistance.

Your goal as a human being is to combat resistance. This is your purpose in life, and it will make you happy. Not happy? It’s probably resistance’s fault, and by extension your fault, for not learning how to beat it.

There’s another lesson from The War of Art that I embrace as gospel: trust the process. No matter how tough a project is, as long as you sit down consistently and open yourself up to it, the ‘Muse’ will come, and everything will be okay. There’s a related mantra in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way: “You take care of the quality, I’ll take care of the quantity.” Hold up your end the bargain, and the rest will come with faith.

I can’t recommend the book enough. I would’ve never written a sentence without it. Nevertheless, every once in a while, a nagging question enters my mind: 

Are these things true, or do they just work? 

There’s really no way of knowing, is there? It’s all metaphysical, unfalsifiable stuff that you can choose to believe or disbelieve without the slightest bit of evidence to support either decision. The only ‘proper’ response to this question is to decline to answer it.

The only problem is that declining to answer offers you no value.

The fact remains: battling the idea of ‘resistance,’ resting your faith in the ‘Muse’ and sitting down every day and trying your best, putting all your inhibitions aside—this works. I don’t believe anyone has ever written anything worth reading, or composed a piece of music worth listening to, or drawn a picture worth seeing, without getting out of their own head and letting something else take over.

Is this the ‘Muse’ coming to their aid, or the ability they have within themselves that fear keeps them from expressing? Does it matter what we call it, or is it all the same, just semantics?

In the absence of any other evidence, doesn’t the fact that one method makes us better and the other makes us worse tip the scales just enough to embrace the functional one as true?

If not, maybe it’s okay to lie sometimes.