Tag: creativity

Redefining Success: Beyond Income and Wealth

In the contemporary United States, a person’s success is most often measured by their income.

While the size of someone’s paycheck often correlates with other types of achievement, such as educational attainment, it says nothing about a person’s character or whether the things they do on a regular basis have the potential to improve lives or make the world a safer, healthier, more beautiful, or more just place.

Income on its own says nothing about a person’s happiness. It cannot tell us whether someone looks forward to getting up in the morning or whether they face each day with a measure of dread. The size of one’s bank account does not indicate whether its owner is living in a way that supports his or her values, interests, talents, and wellbeing, whether they are able to do the things they enjoy, or how their lifestyle affects their interpersonal relationships, the environment, or their community as a whole.

Money is necessary to pay for our housing and necessities, to take care of our loved ones, and to do many of the things we enjoy. But after these requirements are comfortably met, is accumulating more wealth worthwhile if it means sacrifcing happiness and meaning in our lives?

Most of the successful people I know are not rich. They don’t own BMWs, yachts, or vacation homes, but neither are they starving. They are nurses, musicians, teachers, firefighters, artists, farmers, photographers, tour guides, chefs, artisans, plumbers, winemakers, carpenters, and writers who wake up every morning enthusiastic to start their days because they get to do something they enjoy, because their work carries meaning and value that surpasses its assessed economic worth. 

Truly successful people nurture their relationships. They have the time and energy to pursue their hobbies and interests, to learn new skills, to visit new places and discover things about the world and themselves. They make time to watch sunsets. They appreciate the beauty in simplicity. Successful people are happy much of the time because they are rewarded by things that are not, and never will be, for sale.

Real success lies somewhere between presence and productivity, security and curiosity. It deflects judgement. To be successful is to continually improve upon one’s knowledge and understanding of the world. Successful people aren’t afraid of hard work. They take pride in the things they do and make, and ask for advice when they need it. They care about the legacies they leave behind.

No one is getting out of here alive. Whether or not their efforts lead to financial gain, those who use their time on this planet wisely, who understand that wealth and achievement are not necessarily one in the same, will always be the most successful.

ENP

Art is Power

I’ve been thinking about art lately, not only visual art but also literature and music. These things are an important part of my life, not just because I’m a writer but because they make me feel connected to something larger than myself, to other people, to memories I’d forgotten about. Whether I’m listening to music, reading a novel, or looking at a mural, art makes me feel grounded.

Whatever form they might take, we have known for a long time that the arts help foster a sense of community among people by lifting up and celebrating universal human experiences. They give us hope, promote mutual understanding, and can engender feelings of strength and empowerment.

Novels, songs, photographs, and paintings let us know we’re not alone, that there’s a light, however faint, waiting for us someplace in an often too-dark world.

It doesn’t happen often, but there have been times when a painting, photograph, or piece of music has moved me to tears. I once stood in the middle of a gallery at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover crying uncontrollably after looking at a photograph by Sally Mann.

It was an image of a young girl, about seven or eight years old, playing outdoors in dress-up clothes, her dirt-smudged cheeks a perfect foil for the string of pearls around her neck. The expression on her face was one of pure ferocity: Try to stop me. I dare you.

The photograph evoked a time in my early life—in the young lives of nearly all women—when I was fearless, bold, when I was in full possession of my own power and could wield it at will for my own sake and enjoyment, without consideration for the way my behavior would be viewed by anyone, especially members of the opposite sex. Try to stop me. I dare you.

The girl in that photo was me, before I was told that it was time I started dressing and and acting a certain way, that I should lose ten pounds, cross my legs, keep my voice down. Until the moment I set eyes on that image, I’d forgotten all about her. In some ways, that photograph gave me back a part of myself that I’d lost.

The arts communicate thoughts and ideas in a way nothing else can, directly from the heart and mind of one person to the heart and mind of another, even across continents and centuries. It’s for this reason that the arts, and creative people themselves, have historically been viewed as threats by the governments of certain countries, especially by autocratic regimes.

In the 1930s, Hitler’s Gestapo arrested any creative person whose work didn’t conform to Nazi ideology, destroying their studios, dismissing them from their jobs, even sending them to concentration camps.

As part of their mission to squash dissent, authoritarian governments continue this practice today. In 2011, artist and filmmaker Ai Weiwei was arrested and jailed by the Chinese government. And in 2021, Cuba’s president, Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, had artists Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara and Maykel Osorbo arrested on trumped up charges and imprisoned after closed-door trials.

Authoritarians have also sought to use art’s influence as a means toward their own ends.

Artists of which Hitler approved were given the task of creating pieces that supported the narrative the Nazis wished to put forth, works that often depicted strong, blond Aryans conducting wholesome work in an idyllic German countryside.

The Third Reich commissioned several musical compositions to excite crowds and celebrate their perceived achievements, some of which were performed live as Jews were marched to their graves.

A similar phenomenon has often been seen in dictators commissioning images of themselves, not only to boost their own egos but to implant in people’s minds the idea that they are omnipresent and all-powerful.

Josef Stalin ordered hundreds of images of himself to be created, paintings and sculptures that plastered the Soviet landscape during the first half of the twentieth century. The same thing can be seen today in North Korea, Syria, and Turkmenistan.

Making and consuming visual art, music, and literature can also be an act of resistance. This has historically been the case in many countries, even in the United States. Some of these American works include Andy Warhol’s 1964 silkscreen Race Riot; Keith Haring’s 1989 painting Ignorance = Fear / Silence = Death, created to protest the government’s lack of response to the AIDS epidemic; Dorothea Lange’s powerful photographs of migrant workers; and the well known The Problem We All Live With, painted by Norman Rockwell in 1964 to draw attention to the school desegregation crisis in the South.

Since the election, much has been written speculating about how the creative community in the United States will fare under a government that has historically been hostile toward it. Some have predicted art’s demise or at least its decline. But I disagree with this idea. Like the human spirit, one of art’s greatest strengths is in its resilience, in its ability to rise up under the most adverse of circumstances.

As long as the arts provide us with a source of strength, hope, and inspiration people will fight to protect and preserve them. And as long as we have them as part of our lives, our culture and we ourselves will persevere.

*A version of the essay was published on RichardHowe.com.

ENP