The War Of Art by Steven Pressfield
- Your Highlight on Location 1391-1394 | Added on Saturday, March 24, 2018 10:00:04 AM
We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. More than our parents/children/teachers think we are. We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us. That we actually have the guts, the perseverance, the capacity. We fear that we truly can steer our ship, plant our flag, reach our Promised Land. We fear this because, if it's true, then we become estranged from all we know.
Fighting off the Resistance to discover and create is what Pressfield preaches. Challenges are opportunities for adventure, to discover and learn new things about oneself, to abandon the burdens that are holding us back and feel the strengths we’ve developed during the periods of bearing our excessive loads.
Pressfield talks about the creative process, which need not be artistic in the classical sense in my interpretation, but can be stretched to creating relationships, families and lifestyles, in heroic terms. A hero goes off and learns they are able to do what they could previously not imagine doing. A hero is transformed. Those that fear, fear transformation.
‘A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of thirty.’ - Nicholas Nassim Taleb in ‘The Bed of Procrustes