I watched this TED talk by Amy Tan for the first time earlier this year and immediately felt identified with it. And watching it again now that my Year of Nothing just finished, it makes much more sense.
Here are the elements of Tan’s personal philosophy and approach to creativity that I found most interesting:
- Embrace uncertainty, ambiguity and paradox with an adventurous attitude. Try to approach all situations with an open mindset that allows you to immerse yourself in “the specifics of the story.” This stance is more conducive to the truth than when we thrust forward in life with too much attachment to a particular paradigm.
- Imagination is as much a tool for creative work as it is for understanding the world and getting ourselves more aligned with truth. Because through imagination we can put ourselves within “the specifics of the story” that other people go through, it is also a means to becoming more compassionate.
- For getting creativity flowing, Amy goes out to the world and wanders around until she’s hit by some uncanny incident that “delivers” crucial information that she was missing, or that “validates” the direction taken by a particular story she’s working on. Whether this is the work of synchronicity or of a “wider mental filter” caused by her immersion in the particulars of a story, the fact is that the more she’s aware of these meaningful coincidences, the more they happen, and the more she’s able to learn from them. My hunch is that this approach is applicable beyond artistic work.
- “What’s our place in the universe? Did the universe intend for us to have a particular role, or is it all an idea we just come up with?.” While these are perhaps unanswerable questions, truly creative, meaningful work often feels like walking on a path that will enable us to grasp, at least, “particles of truth” in this regard.