Some time ago, I was designing a gabled roof to cover a client’s porch. I was stumped trying to solve a detail involving the intersection of a vertical post, a horizontal beam, and a frame for a bug screen. I remembered a solution I liked from a project I’d worked on a few years earlier and decided to return to the site to check it out.
At the former project, I’d worked designing and building a variety of structures on the back side of a nine acre property. With a crew of five others, we’d converted a barn into a meditation hall and office, built a long horizontal platform for the practice of Zen archery, and erected a prefabricated yurt with a custom deck. Creativity abounded.
Soon thereafter, I learned the property had been sold to another couple shortly after we completed our work. On that day, however, when I rounded the corner onto my former job site, I was dumbfounded at what I saw: the meditation hall had been converted to a guest house, and both the Zen Archery platform and the yurt nearby were gone without a trace. What took us seven months to build had been erased in under two years.
My reaction upon seeing this was shocking even to myself.
The hours spent contemplating the designs on paper, estimating the materials, then carefully assembling them into their final form were gone. All the days spent laboring beneath the hot sun, all the efforts of myself and my coworkers, were gone. And many of the valuable materials that we’d tried to utilize in such a way as to minimize waste were gone.
But I did not feel sad, depressed, or angry. I felt exhilarated. And my feeling of exhilaration revealed something that was hidden to me before.
Our desire to create comes from two places. One is our life force wanting to deepen its connection to the universe through the process of creating. The other is our finite sense of self seeking validation through a finished product.
As I recalled my time working on the project, I could see these two desires at work. When my life force was at the helm, I lost myself in what I was doing: I luxuriated as my pencil revealed a line of the structure on my drafting table. I merged with the 2 x4’s I was measuring, marking, and nailing into place. I felt a joyful burn in my arms as I lifted a beam into place. And I felt a sense of comradery and appreciation among my co-workers. The satisfaction came not from the act of completing, but simply doing.
I could also clearly recall those times when my finite sense of self was dominant. I would second guess the marks I put on the trace paper and worry that I wasn’t doing it right. I felt heavy and tired, wishing the day would end soon. I would be annoyed with my fellow carpenters and judge them if I thought they were being lazy. I would gripe to myself that I wasn’t being paid enough.
In reviewing all this I was reminded that the quest for fulfillment can only happen in the present. The deeper satisfaction we seek doesn’t happen upon completing a project. It depends upon our openness and receptivity as the project unfolds. Such differences separate the mere worker from the craftsman. A worker focuses on the end result. A craftsman opens up to the process as a whole.
Everything we bring into the world will someday be gone. The idea of some enduring legacy is bankrupt. Whether we make block prints on rice paper or carvings out of granite, if we are using our creations to validate our existence, we will never be truly satisfied. When we turn our back on impermanence we turn our back on the reordering of wholeness moment after moment, we turn our backs on the illusion of some fixed reality that appeals to our finite sense of self. We hold onto our tiny life preserver instead of becoming one with the swirling shape shifting ocean.
Imagine your projects after they’re gone. Embrace the ephemeral nature of the world in everything you do. Know in your bones that nothing endures, not you, not your projects, not the materials you use or the people who help you to build them. When you embrace impermanence, you say, “YES!” to the dynamic, ever-changing nature of the universe. You allow yourself to disrobe and enter the creative stream of ever-present change.
Knowing this, ask yourself: Why bother to create in the first place?
Do so to honor the precious and ephemeral nature of your life on this planet. Do so to celebrate the rare and precious awareness you’ve been given. Do so to engage your intricate and precise vehicle of a physical body. Do so to challenge and expand your supple mind. Do so to delight yourself and others in the process of giving your unique and timely gifts to the world.
When you lose yourself in the present, the project will complete itself. If you remain tied to the result, you will fill the pain of being always one step removed.