“Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.” ― Henry Miller

The fun of travel is to go to unfamiliar places and discover a world wholly different from our own. A place where we may find the similarities or delight in the rituals and traditions that make a place unique. The sin of travel is to go and not meet the place halfway. How many people go to a place and never attempt the local language? How many stick to food they know and never indulge in the local cuisine? Discovery is getting outside of ourselves and meeting the world on its terms, and finding out something new, not just about that place, but about ourselves.

The thing is, most of us recognize this about travel, but what of art? When we dive into the unknown in our creative work, are we going deeper with it or retreating back to familiar themes? I’ve heard the feedback: this blog dances on the same ground more often than not, and I’m straying further beyond the themes of memento mori, carpe diem, tempus fugit and amor fati to see what I may find within. Now familiarity with these themes are so central to a well-lived, productive life that they inevitably find themselves in the mix again and again, but who wants to be a one-trick pony?

The routine changes slightly, adapted to circumstance and commitments, but the daily reckoning continues. Open up a blank page and see what comes out to greet the world. We must be creative and chase our impulses, or we cannot truly live the life we were meant to live. The question to ask ourselves is, are we settling for the familiar and comfortable so much that we aren’t challenging our perspective?

How will today be different than yesterday? Go do the unusual: live and tell about it. There is so much untapped within. We ought to shake that tree and see what falls out.