A Dog That Chases Its Tail

Question: Professional activity attracts a person by the opportunity to create and get renewed. How much comes from me towards this renewal and how much comes from the supporting environment that appreciates me? I want to be proud of myself, to be respected, etc. Can creativity become a trap, like a mousetrap?

Answer: I feel some renewal every time I work creatively. There is another painting, a film, a performance, and a song. I sort of die while working at it, as usually occurs among creative people. I write, make films, compose music, and there’s a certain niche, where a person is like the Creator. One creates and feels renewed with each creative piece. It is a trap.

This is the life for some people involved in creative work. At the same time, they don’t feel pleasure in anything else; they neglect everything else and are ready to write with their own blood. The most important thing for them is to create a new picture or make a new discovery, because this action fulfills their needs. Creation is inside them, and that’s why nothing else worries them.

For a person absorbed in creative works, there’s no enjoyment in food, sex, family, wealth, or power. If a person thinks about that, then he doesn’t produce creatively; he becomes no different than the others. Today people like this are harder to come by. Today creativity is being used for profit and success, becoming a kind of business.

Question: King Solomon concludes at the end of a reflection on labor and work, “And I started to hate all the work which I’ve done under the sun.” You call it a trap. Why?

Answer: Because it doesn’t lead to the goal! The artist, too, like a dog, chases its tail, only feeling pleasure sometimes during the cycles of one’s work. We do the same by changing jobs, family, even our country, and still feel the void, though at a different level.

Question: Solomon, in “Ecclesiastes,” says with a shiver that the next area is personal and family relations. Ultimately, there is no happiness there, and the modern statistics confirms this. What can be more natural than family ties? A person feels happy at one’s wedding and during a child’s birth.

Answer: This is the way nature has it so we continue the human race. The general objective of the development of mankind in the process of evolution is to have each person ask: Why do I live?

This question and its correct implementation separate us from the animals. Otherwise we are animals. I just live, work, save money for a vacation, house, and other things, take care of life’s chores, and it has no beginning and no logical end. For what?
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From the program “A New Life” 5/23/13