I am reading “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert. (I highly recommend the book to anyone who is engaged in a passion project.) In the chapter titled Enchantment, I found this:
I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of intersecting with us–albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual.
This paragraph may strike many as loosey-goosey and new-agey. At one time, I would have been among the skeptics. But, I am now more inclined to be one of the believers. The example that Gilbert herself provided — about an idea that came to her but eventually became manifest in partnership with a different author — is uncanny enough.
But, my own experiences regarding “To Be Useful” are equally so (to me anyway) as I described in Biography as Inspiration.
The concept of “Ideas and Partners” is itself an idea that sought manifestation and it did so using Gilbert as its human partner. By being manifested it will inspire other human partners and empower/accelerate the manifestation of other ideas in search of human partners.
The idea that I am the human partner — even if merely a scribe or a conduit — of an idea that seeks to be manifested gives me the strength to go on. It frees me of the fears that Gilbert has listed in the chapter on Courage.
You’re afraid you have no talent.
You’re afraid you will be rejected or criticized or ridiculed or misunderstood or — worst of all — ignored.
You’re afraid there is no market for your creativity; and therefore no point in pursuing it.
… and so on…
The point in pursuing this idea is that it allows me to feel useful (to not be a net consumer), to tell a fascinating story, and to honor an important person in women’s history. And that is plenty.
But, as they say in tv infomercials, there is more…
Anandi was the human partner of the idea that women deserved better lives, that they were capable of a life of the mind. She was also the human partner of the idea that East and West could meet and that they would influence each other in interesting (and mostly good) ways.