I am not a particularly skilled craftsperson myself, but I know a few. Some who produce such wonderfully beautiful pieces that they produce as gifts or simply for their own personal enjoyment. Upon sharing these creations with the world I have observed that when someone chances on their talent they usually respond immediately with the same comment ‘you could sell that!’, ‘someone would pay good money for that’ or even ‘why are you wasting your time doing your other job when this is what you should be doing?!’
These comments come from a kind, complimentary place, they are suggesting that the person has honed their craft so well there is now value in it, that they have perhaps come out of the amateur phase and entered into the professional realm. And yet what we fail to attribute value to is that perhaps the artist in question still lives in an amateur mindset, and that they are having a jolly good time there. Being an amateur means you engage in an activity but you’re not paid for it, perhaps you’re not officially qualified and it’s not your work. This means you think differently to the professional. You don’t have the goal (or need) for what you are doing to result in income and this means you can do things your way and outside of expectations and this is perhaps been the exact thing that has led you to be able to ‘get so good at it’. To switch it into a more professional capacity does more than just a gentle rock of the apple cart, it shifts it from play to work.
For some people, ie the 100s and 1000s of people living and working as creatives and artists, this is the path they choose to take, it is their purpose and they are happy for their play to drift into the professional arena of play. They then have to become disciplined at working within those harder measures and goals so they still find play within their work to maintain the levels of creativity they need to stay top of their game - this is a life’s work and it’s likely they’ll need to pick up some alternative forms of play in and around their main ‘work’ to keep that going.
But for many of us who find a meditative joy in amateur pursuits we may be wise not to realise we’ve already found the dream. Learning something that is pitched at the right level of challenge for us, where we are focussed but not stressed and results in joy, I believe is what life is all about. To live is find flow and to grow as a person in every respect of the word comes from participating in these amateur pursuits that from the outside may appear frivolous, luxurious even to some, but are having an unbelievable positive impact on the brain, opening pathways and literally creating more open, calmer, humans.
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