I want to change the world

[Originally published 1/26/14; updated 9/14/14]

I love the essay by Matt Goldman in Katie Couric's The Best Advice I Ever Got.  When he and Phil Stanton and Chris Wink were starting the Blue Man Group in the late 1980s, "a lot of people--smart people, good-willed people, even loved ones and relatives" told them it was crazy.  And not even Goldman himself expected the kind of success they have achieved, and the kind of international impact they have had. 

He says, "Don't listen to anyone's advice.  At least, don't listen to the advice of people who tell you what you can't do.  Instead, find some good advisers whom you respect and trust and care about and listen to them.  Then integrate what they are telling you with your own thinking, and really listen to yourself, your own learning, your gut instinct."

"I wanted to be crazy, and I advise you to be crazy.  To be weird.  To be unreasonable.  That's my favorite one.  People are always saying, 'Oh, come on, be reasonable!' And I want to shout, 'No!  I don't want to be reasonable!' I want to be completely unreasonable.  I want to change the world.  I want to be creative.  I want to change the world creatively.  And I want other people to be unreasonable with me."

You know what?  I want to change the world, too.  Do you? 

To the words of Matt Goldman, I want to add the words of Mary Oliver:  “The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”

It is time for me to give my creative power the power and time it deserves. It is restive and uprising, and in need of succoring.  I no longer want to be among the most regretful people on earth.