March 10 | Inspiration

There is no scientific formula for inspiration.

It’s not for lack of interest. Can you imagine the use to society? It would rival penicillin or electricity. Every single innovation on the list of “greatest human inventions” would pale in comparison to someone quantifying the very for that invented everything—inspiration. 

In that regard, we’re all some kind of inspiration addicts. We crave it, the moments when the words fly onto the page, the song writes itself in one go, the problem has an impossibly new, impossibly interesting solution—we become conduits to another place, bringing the light of inspiration to ordinary work.

But there’s no way to bottle it. No treasure map to finding it. We’ve tried all right—with countless books and blogs and podcasts and studies attempting to find the source. 

This is not one of those attempts. Instead, it’s an observation: none of us know how inspiration works. There’s no deep sea mine or wild chemical formula.

So we have to keep looking. We have to keep looking everywhere. None of us is given the knowledge of where inspiration is hidden—so we can’t afford to tune any of it out.

We have to keep our ears open all day. Have to show up attentively. Fortune may favor the bold, but inspiration favors those souls who love her enough to keep looking for her everywhere—

Graffitied in the corner of a bus stop, wiggling it’s way out from underneath tree roots, buried under 10,000 boring words…

Just waiting to be found.… Read the rest