Between the Lamp and the Sun

Genius Loci readers:

I skipped last month’s newsletter. And even as I type these words, I’m tempted to skip this month’s too. I find myself pursued by the writer’s oldest adversary, that self-destructive feeling that one has nothing to write about. I use the word “feeling” here deliberately because that’s what it is. It is an emotional response not grounded in any reality, at least not for me.

Sometimes this feeling is wrapped in shame and avoidance. It is better to remain silent than to confront the fact that I didn’t accomplish as much as I wanted to accomplish. This becomes especially destructive when we rationalize the shame away. Besides, nobody wants to hear about minor progress anyway. Other times, this feeling is wrapped in self-doubt. I have nothing worthy to say. I have no new insight to provide. I have nothing to contribute. Nobody cares about what I have to say. Nobody wants to hear from me, of all people.

Yet, as is often the case, our feelings are contradicted by reality.

In fact, when I think about it, the past few months were especially full and busy. They were full and busy in the positive sense. I read several books related to my research, and a few for pleasure. I wrote thousands of words, some of which appeared on an On Mountains post about mountains in the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe. I edited and published a documentary about a Bolivian pilgrimage to a sacred mountain on YouTube, which consumed no small portion of my time. And I spent a great deal of time thinking.

And life was also positively full and busy domestically. My mother came to visit from abroad, I painted the house during my spring “break,” my son had his second birthday, and our family has been riding bicycles in the evenings after dinner.

In short, the past few months have opened many doors, they have provided many opportunities to reflect upon and to write about.

And yet, if what I felt was just an illusory feeling, that’s not to say that the feeling wasn’t justified. The fullness crowded out the time and space to dedicate to reflecting, synthesizing, and creating.

Maybe we can have days that are too full and busy in a positive sense. Which is to say, to be full and busy in a positive sense is still to be full and busy. It is like you’ve eaten too much kale and broccoli: while nutritious, the fact remains that you’ve eaten too much. You’ve become immobilized. You haven’t left space for anything else. Your portions are not balanced.

What would balancing our daily portions of life and creativity look like? How many hours should one dedicate each day to playing, resting, living, experiencing, consuming, reflecting, synthesizing, and actually creating? Should we even expect ourselves to dedicate a part of our day to reflection and creation much like we expect to drink water or to eat a certain amount of protein or fiber? What would we place at the foundation of our creative pyramid? What would we place at its apex?

The foundation of a Pyramid of Creative Work might be sleep, rest, play, and movement. Above that, consuming, reading, researching sits below reflecting, journaling, and making connections. At the apex of the pyramid might be the product, the creative output.

The creator needs to have a balanced life and existence.

In his book The Intellectual Life, the French Catholic thinker Anton-Gilbert Sertillanges recommended what we might today call a healthy “work-life balance” to those interested in living a life of the mind. “Give up nothing of what belongs to man,” he wrote implying that even the thinker, the intellectual, the philosopher must not lose touch with what it means to be human. We must live in the world. We must seek rest and joy. Work should not come at the expense of one’s life.

The man who thinks exclusively of his work, works badly: he cramps himself; he acquires a specialized bent which becomes a defect. The mind must stay open, must keep contact with humanity and with the world, so that every time it comes back to its work, it brings capacity for a new flight.

Conversely, for Sertillanges, life should not come at the expense of one’s work. Those who are called to do intellectual or creative work must ensure there is space for the work.

But the takeaway here is appreciating the beautiful duet between work and rest. It is understanding that rest, play, or life is an important, generative part of creative work. Rest doesn’t serve one’s work any more work serves one’s rest. They are mutual dependencies.

Before you call me a “twat” for treating family time as something less than a life well-lived, please know that I am also stalked by another adversary. The work I’ve been called to do has a shadow that grows longer and longer. It is a feeling of never having enough time. The sun is falling towards the horizon.

Unless I am doing The Work, unless I can dedicate time and space to The Work, unless I can embody The Work, I feel as if I am wasting what little life I have left. I know this sounds ridiculous, pretentious, and unhealthy, but it is a feeling I haven’t been able to shake.

That which pulls us away from ourselves can be beautiful and rich and full. The Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset had a word for this: alteración — the state of being pulled outside of oneself, absorbed by the world. What can pull us away are distractions like painting the house and algorithmic media, but they can beautiful things like birthday cakes and bicycle rides. What makes a human, says Ortega y Gasset, is our power of “withdrawing himself from the world and taking his stand inside himself.” The word he used for this superpower is ensimismarse — the state of being inside oneself. Ortega y Gasset suggests that if we never withdraw into ourselves, we’re nothing but sub-human primates always and forever reacting to environmental stimuli.¹

I should say here that, between the birthday cakes and bike rides, I have been writing. But my writing hasn’t been public-facing, which is a specific kind of writing. Note-taking and journaling are different than, say, writing a public-facing piece meant to be read by others. Public-facing writing needs to provide some value, whether it is information, inspiration, or entertainment. Put another way, public-facing writing serves others, while note-taking and journaling are self-serving.

Self-serving work supports a person’s humanity as much as it supports the work one does, as we see in the Pyramid of Creative Work. This type of writing is writing to think, as opposed to public-facing writing which is writing to communicate.

When we don’t produce public-facing work, which we have defined as work that provides value, many of us today feel as if we are not producing anything of value. This is a life-threatening disease we need to treat. The self-serving work, the note-taking and journaling and thinking and reflecting and resting and playing, is valuable. It is an important part of The Work.

The French poet Paul Valéry spent many decades writing in his notebooks between 5 am and 8 am, the time “between the lamp and the sun.” He thought his notebooks to be his most important intellectual output. While his notebooks have now been published and even translated into English, Valéry treated them a kind of private laboratory — a private space in which to think, to experiment, to test, to tinker.

I’ve been tinkering in my own laboratory these past few months. Between the birthday cakes and bicycle rides, between the video editing and this blinking cursor, I have also been thinking and jotting and researching. These form the foundation of the Creative Pyramid — the unglamorous, unreadable, unshared work that makes everything above it possible.

Thanks for reading and farewell,

JB