Permission to surprise yourself

We are living in a time when the value of our actions are only recognised if they are measurable either through likes, views, rankings in charts, or other metrics.

Children learn early on that their worth can only truly be judged by the marks they achieve in tests, examinations, and by the money they can acquire in the future.

Today the word creator implies we should create in order to monetise what we do, creating for its own sake is treated as an outdated concept.

And in this race to be content creators expectation weighs heavy on our shoulders

Every mark we make, every scale we sing, every word we write must be perfect. Mistakes are signs of weakness, of failure.

But I want to argue that mistakes are our opportunity to give ourselves permission to surprise ourselves. By allowing ourselves to be surprised we grow and improve more than we can understand, and this in turn is a gift we share with those who encounter what we do. By surprising ourselves we surprise others. We take back control of our creativity from the hands of those who see it only as a commodity.

‘No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.’

Robert Frost

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