Before you can radiate, you need to absorb
Before you can radiate, you need to absorb
Before you can radiate, you need to absorb. Only then can you turn your unique life experiences into meaningful art for others.
Two authors I enjoy reading on Substack are Ted Gioia and Andrea Petrovic. They apparently have nothing in common. Ted Gioia primarily writes about jazz and the history of music, but he also delves into discussions about society and business. Despite his passion for music and his desire for a career in the field, he pursued a path in business, leading to a successful career. He inspired me to write a previous piece, which you can find here, on mastery. I quoted Ted, who wrote about his lifelong desire to obtain wisdom.
I was determined to pursue this path of wisdom even if others tried to stop it.
When I was in high school, I got up at 5:30 AM so I could read a long time before going to my first class. Over the course of my life, my daily schedule starts with reading and ends with reading—and there are blocks of reading during the day.
There have been times in my life when I had to work demanding jobs, with late hours and constant deadlines. But I always found time to read for an hour or so before starting work in the morning. This frequently cut into my sleep or forced me to make other sacrifices.
I always begin the day with a book. I read at lunch. I read at dinner (until I got married). I read at night before going to sleep. Then I start the cycle again the next day.
Andrea writes about tennis. In fact she doesn’t write about tennis, she writes about life, friendship and adversity. Tennis is just the medium through which she conveys those themes.
To give you an example of her writing, here is a quote from her last piece
The other week I held a speech about transformation and resilience in front of a bunch of CEOs. After the talk when I tried to escape to a bathroom one man grabbed me gently by the arm and said:
“Andrea, I have a question, how do you function under pressure?”
“Oh”, I said, “you just have to do it every day.”And that was the time when I crushed a man’s soul in a grey conference room in front of thirty CEOs. I’m just kind of joking. I saw the light go out in those soft brown eyes. He wanted a life hack, I gave him a life task.
As mentioned previously these two authors have apparently nothing in common. But I hope that you see that they do. They both have a density that only comes from many years of hard work.
And then there is style. Both these authors have great style. Why? Style is a by product of the way the author thinks. It therefore gives context which makes the content richer. As both of these authors have a dense life experience, this comes out in their style.
The butterfly effect is the idea that small changes in a system can have large and unpredictable consequences. The term was coined by Edward Lorenz, a mathematician and meteorologist, in the 1960s. The butterfly effect is a reminder that we are all interconnected and that our actions can have far-reaching consequences. It is also a reminder that we should be careful about making assumptions about the future, as even small changes can have big impacts.