At the end of the day, what matters? That you made a lot of money? That you changed someone’s life? That you beat out the competition? That you are famous? That you are respected? Loved, even?
If the Coronavirus can teach us anything, it is that life is fragile and largely beyond our control. Whether the disease turns out to be devastating economically, physically, psychologically, even spiritually beyond what it already is, or not much of anything beyond what we know today, what it has already done is point out how incredibly hard it is for us to deal with uncertainty. Plan all you want but you cannot know the future.
As with all upheavals, natural disasters, economic downturns (crises), political machinations, tomorrow does come. How then do you find your way forward?
Might I suggest that the answer to finding your way forward and to what matters at the end of the day is how you deal with uncertainty. For creative business, the essence is that the end is not guaranteed. You are literally paid because what is sought might not work out no matter how many times you have been up the proverbial mountain.
The very beauty of the CV (if there can be any beauty in a disease) is that it knows no socio-economic boundaries when it comes to infection. Treatment, of course, is another story, but we are all literally in this together when it comes to infection. And within that thought is the practice that needs to develop as to the idea that tomorrow will come and that it will demand its own contemplation separate and apart from today.
CV eats at the power of community, of coming together to share ideas and moments and memories. If you in the business of creating the forum for those ideas, moments and memories how are you to assess what matters? We are seeing the power of the digital age and our ability to manage without physical connection where possible. Simultaneously isolated and connected. How you communicate the necessity of holding both things while not diminishing the need for physical intimacy is the challenge of the moment.
Uncertainty will draw the best and worst from all of us. The best of us is the conviction that humanity is larger than any moment and that our humanness demands art in its purest form — that which will help us chart an uncertain future. Hope.
Hope will not say that it will all be ok. It might not. No, hope is only that uncertainty will resolve itself within the ethos we demand. CV might drive us physically apart in so many ways, make it wholly convenient to isolate ourselves in all ways. Except we cannot go back to a fragmented world no matter how appealing it might appear. The beauty of the idea today is not its ownership but its dispersion so that it might constantly improve. You might not be a fan of Wikipedia but just think of how far and fast it shares information. Still want to dust off your encyclopedias? There is no going back even for a moment.
Instead, there is a redefinition of uncertainty, for which all artists must be now be paid.
Practically, it means that this is the moment to rediscover the value and power of what you are tasked to create. Double down. Yes, listen to fear (yours and your clients), acknowledge it and then find purpose and clarity to your work. Do not ask for the world to stay the same as it has forever changed as it always does, just more intensely now. Deliver the joy as only you know how to do. This is an eternal constant that sometimes gets lost in the midst of upheaval. Let it be your compass.
Fair warning: if you have not done the work of knowing your value and getting paid for it when you have earned it, but instead have focused on being marginally better than the rest, life is about to get really really hard. Perhaps you can find your way to telling a better story that will be compelling and stop racing to the bottom. Old habits and fear have a way of sucking all the air out of the room though. The reason is simple — if you have not fully invested in mattering to those that care but instead have just tried to get better at finding a “yes”, you will become desperate as those similarly desperate will cannibalize you as acknowledged business contracts.
Nature is cruel, albeit efficient. If you have done the work, now is the time to acknowledge that just because you each deliver the same thing does not mean you are in the same business. The journey, never the destination was everything, is everything and will forever be so. At the end of the day you must be convicted in the desire to start anew, awash in the unknown. This, of course, is faith. And that is what you are left with, faith that your art will tell the story of tomorrow and we will all be enriched if and when you do.
