4/11/23 See Beauty

Many years ago, when I was in the Turtle Island String Quartet and living in the Bay Area in CA, I had the honor of working with the photographer Irene Young and I remember that she had a little sign in her studio that said simply "See Beauty".

Your relationship with the world has everything to do with what you focus on.

If you focus on bad things, it’s easy to get miserable and hopeless. It's a downward spiral.

If you see the beauty in the world, it can give you the energy and inspiration you need to take action--to create art or do good in the world.

And never forget that art on any level, whether professional or amateur, always makes a positive impact on the world.

If you want to follow your dreams, to become the musician you really want to be-- if you want to enjoy the world and enjoy the years of life we're lucky to have--I would recommend you try to see beauty in other people and in the world. 

And the difference between people who achieve success and make an impact and those who don’t is taking action. Doing something.

They say that all entrepreneurs are optimists. 

But it's easy to be a pessimist. You don't have to look very far to see how brutal and unfair and unjust the world can be. But if you focus on that and on how bad people are, the only thing you can do is get angry or frustrated.

Now, that doesn’t mean we should ignore injustice in order to be positive. But we need to be positive in order to have the imagination to figure out how to fix it and then to actually have the energy to start taking action, and the endurance to continue taking action. 

It's like putting on our oxygen masks before helping others.

Positive energy gets things done.

Negative energy in people mostly looks like inaction. Like they’re stuck and they’re miserable being stuck. 

And unhappy people, whether they have a good reason for being unhappy—and plenty of people have absorbed all sorts of unfair wrongs—or if it’s just their nature, unhappy people can be a very real drain on other people.

Because negative energy is contagious. Creative artists get so much negativity thrown at them, it’s hard not to absorb it.

But the good news is that positive energy is contagious, too, which is why support from your peers and having a community of like minded people is so crucial to a healthy creative life.

And the more you see beauty, the more energy you'll have to take action and walk down that winding path of pursuing your own vision.

See beauty! Be the groove you want to hear!

Groove on!

--Tracy