Goethe, Jung, and Babe Ruth: On Safety as Dangerous

“The dangers of life are many, and safety is one of those dangers.”

--- Goethe

It is ironic, wouldn't you agree, that one of the greatest obstacles to a truly creative life is too overpowering a yearning for safety?

Carl Jung spoke of the creative life, one in tune with art, spirituality, and the present moment, as requiring the opus contra naturam.  Literally, it is indeed "a work against nature," going upstream, to resist the entropy toward the familiar, and to choose for bringing two or more previously unlinked ideas into a single space.  (This is what Harvard psychiatrist, Albert Rothenberg, calls "homospatial process," or more simply, creativity.)

Years ago, out of a dream, the following words came to me: "Sometimes a brilliant mistake is preferable to a more mediocre correctness."  Here then is to risking safety, even risking to make a mistake, in order to invite in the creative act...

Babe Ruth may have said it most clearly: "Never let fear of striking out get in your way."

Creative Block and the Ego’s Death

Have you ever noticed that creativity may not come naturally --- or as a friend of mine says, “through the front door”?  For example, why is it when I have an open hour or two (or occasionally, longer) to compose new music (a lifelong hobby) that I oftentimes will find myself resorting to mundane or repetitive tasks instead; which cut into my available time for creative projects?  I’ve even mentioned to friends, with befuddlement: “It’s amazing how interesting vacuuming all the floors can be when faced with wide-open time for creative purposes?”