Keep Showing Up: Elizabeth Gilbert on the Creative Life

I am not usually one for mumbo-jumbo; I have difficulty getting behind religion as something more than a fascinating outlet for human belief, and while all mythologies are equal they still all feel like a veneer over the truth of what is weird about life. And then there's creativity.

It is hard not to approach creativity from a spiritual standpoint. There is something about it that is so elevating, so strange, so genuinely immortal, that the idea it is simply chemical reactions bouncing around my head is hard to believe. It's not something I can articulate beyond the usual words "inspiration" and "writer's block", if for no other reason than that other efforts at articulation make me sound totally insane.

And then Elizabeth Gilbert did this talk at TED. And I stopped feeling quite so insane.



I could write an entire essay echoing what Gilbert has said here; but the bottom line is, I think she's right. And I am no longer going to be ashamed to say it.