Afternoon Tea: Is to be creatively stuck *secretly* related to shame?

"Don't you think the things people are most ashamed of are things they can't help?”

This Afternoon Tea topic: Creativity and shame

This afternoon’s tea: Spicy chai sipped in the dark on a sunny day

A summary of my previous Afternoon Tea: Inspiration is like breath [it does not run out, it moves within you, intertwined with who you are] and a guide to building your personal bookshelf for inspiration.

I look into the past a lot for insight about the future. I shared a little about my process when gathering inspiration, where I look to, and what I look for. What am I made of? What and who came before me? It guides me when I need answers, when I need to figure out what to do next—big or small.

And I need guidance lately. I feel I’ve been Alice endlessly falling in the dark rabbit hole, waiting to hit the ground. I want to expand creatively in my career, I want to hone in on what I create personally, but the paths feel overwhelming, and my wallet is slim. What is the right option? What is the right way? Oh, dear, am I lost?

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

Steve Jobs

At the core of this personal tumbling-down-the-rabbit-hole season, overwhelmed and uncertain, I remember so much of being human is learning. Learning to navigate, learning to feel, to exist. There’s a rhythm, and we spend this life learning to listen, to beat with it.

And so, I like to think of feeling lost as a rhythm exercise. Like a drummer practicing on a drum, learning to align beat with rhythm. It takes listening. A hit off tempo is simply a moment, an adjustment away from being on tempo. To navigate life is to practice, to play and to question, to reroute and to adjust. To align with the beat. To create a rhythm. To connect the dots. It’s a natural process, growth.

Yet, when I’m off tempo, when I feel a little lost, I feel left out or behind, I feel lesser than everyone else. I feel I am doing something wrong. To feel lost is not strong, says society. There is pressure to get it right. Pressure not to fail. And then comes shame.

I shared some of my thoughts a few weeks ago on The Curse and Poor Things, and how to me, at the core of the show and the film lies the characters’ relationships to shame. I do believe more and more shame is at the core of human pain and hate and struggle and anxiety. And if inspiration is like breath, then the process of creativity is intimately intertwined with our mind and body. The flow of my mind affects the flow of my creativity. And when I feel shame, my creativity feels shame.

“I felt ashamed."

"But of what? Psyche, they hadn't stripped you naked or anything?"

"No, no, Maia. Ashamed of looking like a mortal -- of being a mortal."

"But how could you help that?"

"Don't you think the things people are most ashamed of are things they can't help?”

C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces