What's Your Fight?
EPISODE 050: WHAT’S YOUR FIGHT?
A friend asked me a question recently that brought me a series of revelations that have pulled me once again, from my funk and my boredom. That question was this: what's your fight? Life is always a bit of a struggle but the specific fight we choose to be part of is what gives us the kind of focus and challenge we most need to get to Flow. Let's talk about it.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
Over the last few months, like a lot of people, I have felt a little, lost. That's the best word I can find, but it's not really lost. Drifting perhaps. I've felt–still feel–like I'm holding my breath and I keep forgetting to exhale. Most of all I feel like I'm waiting but with no real sense of what I'm waiting for, or when whatever it is I'm waiting for will come. I'm back to being bored, which is a hard thing to admit when so many others have problems so much larger than boredom. But in my defence, I don't mean I've got nothing to do. I can find plenty to do; if keeping busy is the goal, I can fill the hours. But most of us are self-aware enough to know that not every activity is going to satisfy the deeper longings or push away the boredom or the anxiety in the same way. I'm not looking for something to DO. I'm looking to do something that matters. I don't know if the pandemic has made some of the things with which I might normally fill my time feel trivial, but it sure feels that way.
It feels like I've lost the urgency with which I once approached things. Like I've lost some of the fight that was in me, which I know isn't true because in some ways I've never been more ready for a fight. Last weekend Cynthia and I drove to Victoria, the nearest real city to us on Vancouver Island; it's a two-hour drive and by the time we got there I was so worked up over the inconsiderate drivers and the ones doodly-dooing their way south, hogging the passing lane instead of just moving over and letting the rest of us drive at a reasonable speed that I think Cynthia was beginning to look for ways to slip me a tranquilizer. The other day I came out of the pool and someone had left all their crap strewn all over the change-room in the health club and I felt disproportionately angry. Who leaves their underwear on the floor?
No, there's no shortage of fight in me these days, but in the absence of something worthy for which to fight, it looks like I've reverted to petty things of no real consequence, though I'd give you the world if you could tell me how to make people just a little more considerate of one another.
This is all a bit of a long way of getting to a question that a friend asked me last month, and one I want to ask you in return. He's the one that sent me the article that got me fired up in Episode 49, the one with the quote about working from home and how it was responsible for a lack of creativity in a workforce that I think is really only just adjusting to a new way of doing things, a workforce that's a bit shell-shocked and trying to shake things off and re-adjust. So you can thank my buddy Lance for this one too. We were talking about direction, specifically in how I present my brand to the world but also in terms of what I want to be when I grow up, and I think I was a little bit all over the map, so to focus me he asked me this one question: what's your fight?
What is my fight? What's your fight? And what does that have to do with our creative lives? I'm David duChemin, and this–astonishingly– is episode 50 of A Beautiful Anarchy, let's talk about it.
Music / Intro
When Lance asked me what my fight was, he was not asking what I struggle with. He listens to this podcast, he's read my books. He knows the answer to that question is long and complicated and way above his pay-grade. Lance isn't a therapist. He's in advertising and he understands creative people and stories, and how we communicate that clearly to the world we want to serve. He wasn't asking what I struggle with, but what I struggle for. What I choose to fight for. And it turns out my answer to that question is not only a what, but a who. I do what I do to help others, like you, to find freedom in your creative life and to win your own fight. I want to help others make. Make art. Make change. Make a difference. That is the specific fight I am signing up for. And not only signing up for, not just waiting for it to come around to me, but it's a fight I'm willing to pick. I think losing sight of that is what got me into the funk I've been in, and remembering it is what's going to get me back out.
My Fight with a capital “F” is my Why. It’s what makes the other daily skirmishes worthwhile. It’s what motivates me when my steam runs out. And when I look back at the various things that I have done with my life, it’s the thread that ties it all together. It’s why I went to theology school, why I did comedy for 12 years, and it’s why I became a humanitarian photographer. To help others live better lives. It’s the same reason some people fight to save the planet, or fight for the rights of the marginalized. Some people fight for beauty. Some for their family.
I think that's the reason I've been in such a funk lately, I forgot what I was fighting for. Or maybe it's because I've just been sitting around waiting for the fight to come to me. I don't know if I've become lazy or just comfortable, but I suspect that this feeling of having lost some of the fight that was in me has more to do with losing sight of the fight that I have chosen to be in.
Not everyone likes the fight metaphor. I've had emails suggesting it's too violent. I get that. On my best days I'm more of an "I'm a lover not a fighter" kind of guy. But as poetic as that sounds, as noble as it feels, it's bullshit. We fight for what we love. And there are many ways to do that, not all of them violent. As much as I wish we lived in a world where we could achieve the things we need and long for without a struggle, without obstacles and opposition, we do not.
Before the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, made the quote so well known, it was Theodore Parker, a 19th century reformer and abolitionist who said that the arc of the moral universe is long but bends toward justice. I love that idea. But I don't believe it. Not on its own. I wish I could. And I don't believe Parker or King believed it either. If they believed the arc of the moral universe bent towards justice all on its own, neither of them would have fought so tirelessly to make it so. Nor do I believe they could have sustained that fight, in both cases for their entire lives, without love.
The creative life, whether your efforts are to bend the arc towards justice, or beauty, the preservation of the planet, the dignity of the forgotten, the health of the sick, or the joy of others, is not one of passivity. The arc does not bend itself. It is a fight. And it’s a fight much easier to win when it’s driven by something larger, like love. I think it's also easier won when it’s a fight that we pick, when we intentionally engage in it and we fight it on home turf, on our terms. But it begins by acknowledging the fight. It begins with something for which we're willing to take some licks.
The question, "What's your fight?" is about identifying that which is most important to us. It's not just our "Why?" It's the why that matter so much we're willing to go to the mats. It's the why with bigger stakes. It's the why that begs us to ask ourselves, everyday if necessary, how important we believe it is that we do our work. If you don't think it's important, how likely is it you'll fight for it? How much will you be willing to risk for it?
What about you? What’s your fight? What’s the thing for which you’ll go to the mats? What's worth the energy, and the inevitable bruises? What's worth the daily foray out of your comfort zone and into the ring? For what are you willing to pick a fight in order to bend the arc?
The reason I’m asking–for those of you who thought this was a podcast about creativity–is this: knowing your fight, and choosing it, gives focus. It focuses attention and requires that we not expend our strength haphazardly. It clarifies the challenge.
Focus and challenge. Those are two of the most important conditions required for us to get into Flow, and while I talk a lot about Flow being one of the great keys to greater creativity, the man who formalized the idea of Flow–Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi–talked about it in broader terms. He talked about it in terms of optimal human experience, of striving for and accomplishing great things not only in creative or artistic efforts, but in science, and athletics and family life, in building community, and finding purpose & happiness in the effort.
Focus and challenge are not passive things. They are not usually comfortable states of being. They demand more from us than we usually feel is immediately, or easily, available. If they were, there would be no challenge, no need to grow into people that are more complex than we are now. No need to make difficult choices. No need to fight our own natural proclivities, like procrastination or the desire to spend our days on the couch binge-watching Netflix. Having a fight that is bigger than we are demands increasing focus and challenge, forces us to make things bigger than we've made before. Bolder, too. It requires me to be wide awake, completely present. It makes us feel more alive.
In the middle of the kind of fight that leads to Flow all our energies are so focussed that there's no attention left to be self-conscious, to be bored, to dwell on less important things. There's no room within fight and flow, for the funk. It gets pushed out, along with boredom and apathy, and is replaced with clarity, serenity, and even ecstasy, a word that means to be out of or removed from our normal place of being. It's where we forget ourselves, the thinking about which is our usual occupation, and begin to feel like we're part of something larger.
Of course, for those of you who feel like your creative efforts are trivial, it's possible you've never seen the connection between your art, or the craft you practice, and the possibility of bending the arc of the universe–moral or otherwise–and perhaps that's fair if you spend your days gluing glitter to macaroni, which is arguably a low-Flow activity for anyone over 5 years old. There's not a lot of fight there because there's no opposition. No resistance.
Resistance is a term Stephen Pressfield uses in his book, The War of Art, and it's one that's been helpful to me in understanding, or identifying my fight. Much of it has to do with fear and Pressfield uses it in the sense that it's a living force that opposes our creative efforts. A little like the good guys are the Muses and the bad guys are The Resistance, and it's a fight between them. I see it a little bit differently, believing we contain both within ourselves. But while the resistance, through my fears and my procrastination, my doubts and the voices from the past that often slow or stop my work, while this resistance presents obstacles to my work, they are not the reason I fight to begin with. They have nothing to do with the thing for which I fight. I don't do what I do just to live in a world free from my own doubts. That's too small. I fight in hopes of living in a world that is increasingly free of your doubts. Your fears, and the resistance that hold you back. I fight because I know creative freedom is not only where you are happiest, and most yourself, but it's where you too will take up your own fight.
I don't know what your fight is. It's possible you don't either. Not yet. Or maybe you've just forgotten it lately, as I did. God knows many of us have been fighting multiple things at once this year. But I'm hoping the question helps. There's got to be some bigger thing that you love enough to fight for it. Truth. Beauty. A future for your children that includes fish in the sea and wild places and clean air. A world more inclined toward Justice than it is now. Education in places where it now suffers. Joy in places it is now suppressed. It's just a metaphor, but if you can find your fight, you can find your flow. And if you can get there, you can bend the arc in any direction you choose.
Thanks so much for joining me and being part of this, for giving me an audience and a chance to speak not only my mind but my heart. If this or any episode of A Beautiful Anarchy has made a difference to you, or if you’re a regular listener who never misses an episode, I’d be so grateful if you'd consider sharing it with others in your world that could benefit from a little encouragement in their everyday creative lives. Just point them to aBeautifulAnarchy.com and they’ll find their way from there. And if you’d like to get in touch with me, you find me anytime at talkback@abeautifulanarchy.com. Thanks again for joining me, now go pick a fight, and make something beautiful.
Music in this episode: Acid Jazz (Kevin Macleod) / CC BY-SA 3.0