The stakes in good work are necessarily high. Our competence may be at stake in ordinary, unthinking work, but in good work that is a heartfelt expression of ourselves, we must necessarily put our very identities to hazard. Perhaps it is because we know, in the end, we are our gift to others and the world. Failure in truly creative work is not some mechanical breakdown but the prospect of a failure in our very essence, a kind of living death. Little wonder we often choose the less vulnerable, more familiar approach, that places work mostly in terms of provision. If I can reduce my image of work to just a job I have to do, then I keep myself safely away from the losses to be endured in putting my heart's desires at stake.
-David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity
I'm attending a science fiction convention this weekend and it's bringing home to me the way I segregate my life, how I observe rather than participate and why these things are changing. I embrace my inner dork, she who loves to wear outrageous velvet clothing and sees the world with eyes trained to look beneath the shallow surface of ordinary reality. And yet most of my life is spent in "passing" for normal, which usually involves people thinking I'm straight, monogamous, conventional and quite possibly Christian. Not that's there is anything at all wrong with any of those ways of being in the world and maybe in another life I was all of those things. It's just interesting to realize that I have created a camouflage that allows me to interact, (and quite possibly survive) in polite society. This realization is followed by recognizing that as I get older it's less and less possible and desirable to wear that protection.
How does this relate to embracing the good work I do in the world? It means that I risk the revealing the inner workings of my thoughts and actions, to allow the world to judge, maybe even dismiss and ridicule me, and I'm certainly not comfortable with the whole idea. As much as I don't give a damn about how people view me these days, I also realize that I do have an investment in being taken seriously by the world around me. And this is something to work with and embrace without fear. Which, as usual, is easier said than done.
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