Aim for Enthusiasm

“Mastery does not come from dabbling. We have to be prepared to pay the price. We need to have the sustained enthusiasm that motivates us to give our best.”  – Eknath Easwaran

I sometimes hear painters refer to their work as an “artistic practice,” in the sense of something they habitually do (as in, “I make it a regular practice to …”). The phrase artistic practice carries with it, for me, the usual sense of practice, something ongoing, which implies one is constantly learning by doing.

It also suggests something about the character of the work: an artistic practice suggests that the work is neither a total inspiration nor a discipline, but somewhere in between – more or less a bit of both.

John LaFarge, The Muse of Painting, 1870

So if not discipline, what’s going to get us to the easel and keep us going back? Motivation needs fuel, and that fuel is enthusiasm – an excitement for doing something that makes us want to give it our best. 

It won’t show up every day, of course. You have to build your own vehicle and make sure it’s ready when the moment of inspiration arrives.

The good news is that, at its root, enthusiasm implies that it is not something we have to generate on our own, purely out of nothing. The root of the word enthusiasm comes  from the ancient Greek en-theos, which literally meant to be filled with a god, that is, entered into with “divine energy.” So enthusiasm comes from engagement with something outside of us. You become filled with enthusiasm about something – and you become inspired by imagination about what form that can take.

It’s on us to open ourselves and remain open to inspiration, to show up and to be there, and to clear away the obstacles we place in our own paths (like feeling disappointed when the result – this time! – doesn’t match the idea). You can’t force inspiration, but you must be ready when it comes – or it simply won’t.

Gustave Moreau, Apollo and the Nine Muses

The Greeks believed the source of artistic inspiration was the Muses – divine energy-beings capable of possessing and working through us. Again, the idea is that we act as conduits, connectors, conductors for something rather than having to generate it out of nowhere all by ourselves.

If you get an idea for a work of art, consider yourself chosen. Maybe ideas are constantly in the air, looking for the right person to act on them. Maybe if you don’t act on an idea, it will keep looking for someone else who will. Ideas are like breezes that blow this way and that all over the world looking for a sail. If your sail isn’t ready when the wind comes, that breeze moves on to someone else’s boat.

After all that’s the meaning of the word inspiration. The Latin in-spiritus is to be “filled with spirit,” the original meaning of which relates to breath – like a ship’s sail filling with a fair wind and the vessel beginning to cleave the waves.

At best, a practice is an entheos – at the very least it’s a continuous activity satisfying in itself. As such, it’s something that, when directed both toward the self and others, can structure and give vital meaning to life. May you discover within yourself that self-renewing flame capable of shedding light for all to see.