Oh honey.
I had to smile and nod and talk about networking and professional development and what a great entrepreneurship program we have (and we do!) because my job is to get butts in the door and tuition accounts paid. But here is what I really wanted to tell her:
Pieces of paper don't mean anything. They are symbols. Metaphors. It takes a lot of work to get them (trust me, I've got lots of first-hand experience), but there is no school or government or authority or single other person on the planet who can tell you who you are. It is the effort, the practice, that is important. Going to the doctor for your annual check-up and a clean bill of health doesn't make you healthy; how you feel in your body and what it can do for you is a better marker of dis-ease or barometer of fitness. Having a shrink tell you that you're sane doesn't make one lick of difference if you feel (or act) crazy. Practicing yoga makes you a yogi, not however many teacher trainings you've accomplished or gurus you've followed around the Indian countryside. Do you run? Even short distances? And then complain about it? You can still be "a runner." No gazelle legs required. If you heal people, you are a healer, whether you have an MD after your name or not. And likewise, an artist is someone who makes art. That is all. You get to decide this. You are in control of your life, not them.
A writer writes. There are no prerequisites or years of suffering and starvation and rejection you must endure in order to wear that badge with pride. Do you play guitar alone in your basement in front of your cats? Then you are a musician. Do you love something or someone? Then you are a lover. Do you have human DNA? No matter your sins or your disabilities, you are human and capable of humanity. That's the most frustrating thing about sociopaths, sometimes they can just be so damn nice. People are messy things, aren't they? Sometimes our labels, our metaphors, our masks, our costumes, our customs, they conflict.
Look, someone may have all the official credentials in the world, but without the energy to practice, without the life force of creativity and their soul's need to give, it will be meaningless. And I don't believe someone else has the authority to look at your life and say, "Here, this is the dividing line: if you do this and this and this you are an artist but if you don't quite do that enough, you aren't."
Pardon me, but screw that judgmental bullshit. To borrow an idea from Thomas Moore (the modern therapist and monk, not Sir Thomas More, the Renaissance humanist), museums are more like rooms for the dead than James Joyce's famous "museyrooms" (rooms for the Muses). All that art sitting around made by dead people isn't like the living breathing awesome creativity sitting inside your very heart beating at this exact secon
d just waiting to burst out. In the immortal words of Martha Graham: "There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique."
This life force doesn't need a label, and as its caretaker, you can call it whatever you want. Don't let someone else tell you who you are. And if you don't know who you are, look at what you love, look at where you put your time, look at what you practice.
You want to be someone who does something? Do it. And then do it again. And again. And what if no one notices? Impossible. You show up for life every day and do the thing you do and someone will notice. Maybe not in the way you want. Maybe not at the time you want. Maybe not with the movie cameras and coffers of coin and parades in your honor. But that won't matter anyway, because you are doing what you love. And that, my new friend, is a life worth living.
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