True Life vs Real Life.
Real vs True
When my son Nicholas was quite young, he would refer to reality or real life, as true life. I always thought this was an amusing mis-titling of the word real and some other cute nomenclatures he and his sister Camille coined. Nozzle for the end of the baguette and gloomers for the light dimmers, among others. Recently, in relaying this story to a fellow attendee at the DO lectures, they saw a distinction between true and real life: real life is the reality of our day-to-day existence, and true life is being more true to yourself, a higher calling maybe? I suppose simply being more true to oneself. For me, this is definitely about stepping into my creativity.
This has me pondering. Is there a distinction between the two? And if so, is there an overlap?
For most of my career, I was an architect and an artist, but these roles seemed to live in different realms. Architecture was my day job, and despite some grand aspirations, a lot of the work that I did was the reality of my day-to-day life—real life. Whereas my painting seems to express my creativity and, in many ways, possibly my true life.
But the thing was that I set up practice in 1991, in the middle of the recession we had to have, mostly because it was the only job I could find. I rented a corner of my mate Colin Loels's office and had no work for the first 6 months. I had also rented part of the top floor of the same building as a studio space and ran a phone line up the light well so that I could paint during the day and answer any calls should a client ring. But the thing is that I found it very difficult to paint as it didn't feel like real work. I ended up sitting at my drawing board, waiting for the phone to ring.
Even today, I sometimes struggle to write and paint during the day because I am conditioned to believe that real work is work that is paid.
But where do I experience overlap?
When painting for an exhibition or completing a commission, I am tapping into my creativity while doing some 'real' work. Similarly, delivering a masterclass or keynote enables me to live for a while in the overlap. In the practice of architecture, my focus was the people who worked for us, and my overlap seemed to be when I was empowering or supporting them.
But when I am absorbed in the business tasks of preparing for masterclasses, business development, doing my taxes, all of those necessary but mundane things required for doing business, I am solely in real life.
In a perfect creative life, maybe these two states overlap so that they eclipse each other, sort of like in the definition of the master of the art of living, as captured in one of my favourite quotes, attributed to James A Michener;
"The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in everything he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is always doing both."
I am far from living a life in which the practicalities of daily existence totally overlap with my creative self.
So, for now, I need to accept whatever overlap I can achieve, but I don't know what to call that intersection. Is it purpose or meaning? I will ponder further, but for now, it is meaningful work for me.
If this resonates with you, I would like to know what you would label the intersection of real and true life and if and how you maintain a healthy overlap.