Tip 3 for Creative Growth: Invite Yourself into a Community of Good Fortune
Redefining what it means to be lucky
Last week I drew inspiration from the music and music producer, Rick Rubin, who reminds us that to lead a creative life is far more important and sustaining than focusing solely on our output. Another artist who inspired me, is the dancer and choreographer, Twyla Tharp and her book, The Creative Habit. A chapter that really stayed with me was titled:
‘How to be Lucky? Be Generous.’
There’s a great deal of talk of luck when people succeed. It always makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. Luck discourse suggests that we’re somehow bowing down to an arbitrary universe - that our good fortune is dependent on the whim of the gods.
Worse, it makes me feel like we’re okay with the fact that a special few get blessed by luck while the rest of us are left scrabbling for scraps.
My understanding of luck is that it’s dynamic: that we participate in it much more actively than we realise.
That’s why I love Twyla Tharp’s take on luck being connected to generosity. She writes that:
“Generosity is luck going in the opposite direction, away from you.”
Let’s read that again so that it really sinks in:
“Generosity is luck going in the opposite direction, away from you.”
In other words, if you’re generous to someone, if you do something to help them out, you are in effect making them lucky.
This is important. It’s like inviting yourself into what Tharp calls, “a community of good-fortune.”
Isn’t this a beautiful way to see your interactions with others?
That, through your kindness and openness and generosity - you can bring luck to others. That it’s not in the hands of the gods – but in your own hands?
There’s a scarcity mentality in our perception of success – as if there’s a pie that, when divided up, will eventually run out, leaving nothing but crumbs on the plate.
In my view, success is infinitely generative.
And it’s connected to my point on imitability (Tip 1 for Creative Growth).
There are as many ways of being successful as there are people on the planet - because your kind of success can never be reproduced or imitated by anyone other than you. When we move away from a feeling that if someone is lucky we are, by default, unlucky, or less lucky, we can become generous. We can enter a dance in which we give freely of ourselves and our skills and our talents and, because everything in the world is connected, we, in turn, grow through that generosity.
It's easy to fall into the trap of seeing ourselves as in competition with one another rather than as collaborators, but I don’t think this is true. I believe that the more we reach out, the more we share, the more we long for others to succeed and to be their own best selves, the more we flourish. Because, inevitably, those we give to, end up bringing out the best in us too: they enlarge us, they teach us, they bring out new things in us.
Twyla Tharp finishes the chapter with the following words:
“I cannot oversate how much a generous spirit contributes to good luck. Look at the luckiest people around you, the ones you envy, the ones who seem to have destiny falling habitually in their laps. What are they doing that singles them out? It isn’t dumb luck if it happens repeatedly. If they’re anything like the fortunate people I know, they’re prepared, they’re always working at their craft, they’re alert, they involve their friends in their work, and they tend to make others feel lucky to be around them.”
Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit
Asking for Help
As a sub point to generosity, it’s also important – and harder, sometimes – to accept, even ask for, the generosity of others.
Asking is a huge part of being an artist. Sometimes, we’ll be in a position when we can answer the knock on the door and help, but that means we also need to be brave and ask for help when we need it. We need to keep knocking on those doors ourselves, even when we’re tired, even when we think no one will answer, even when we’ve knocked a thousand times before and got nowhere.
Persistence in knocking is also a huge part of being lucky.
Writing Prompt
Continuing with the theme of generosity - and how enlarging and reciprocative it is - here’s a beautiful poem by Alberto Ríos, as a springboard for some writing today.
When Giving is All We Have
by Alberto Ríos
One river gives
Its journey to the next.
We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.
We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.
We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—
Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.
Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:
Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.
You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me
What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made
Something greater from the difference.
Prompt: Write about a time in your life when you gave - or received - and how it changed you. It can be a tiny exchange, like a smile or a kind word from a stranger that got you through a tough day, to a more life changing gift. If you need some words to inspire you, use the following from the poem:
River. Journey. Changed. Better. Loud. Because. Quiet. Blue. Yellow. Together. Difference.
Adapt The Writing Prompt
Think of a giving-receiving interaction between characters or a scene you’re working on. Think about how this leaves things changed in your story - and how it changes those involved. Story is all about transformation, especially through encounters.
A Quotation to Chew Over
I don’t usually like unattributed quotations but this one came across my Instagram feed recently and I really liked it. It taps into my 1st Tip for Creative Growth from a couple of weeks back: Cherish Your Inimitability.
“Art is what happens when you dare to be who you really are.”
Unknown
Coming up Next Week
Tune in next week for my 4th Tip on Creative Growth.
With love, dear friends and keep writing - and keep inviting yourself into that community of good fortune.
Virginia🤍
Virginia Macgregor is the author of five novels for adults and two for young adults. She has an MFA in Creative Writing with a specialisation in the teaching of writing. She lives with her husband, her three children, her four cats and a home full of books and coffee mugs, in New Hampshire.
Running to buy Twyla Tharp's book now! Another brilliant tip, Virginia, thank you!
I love this view of generosity. I'm going to take a walk and ponder this. xoxoxox