I've been doing quite a bit of reflecting over the course of the past few days on how my life has evolved to embrace creativity in a way I never would have imagined ten years ago. Reading through my journal, I stumbled on a favorite passage from a wonderful book, A Man Apart, by Peter Forbes and Helen Whynbrow. The book is part family memoir and part biography, about friend and mentor Bill Coperthwaite. Enjoy, and find the encouragement you need to fill you up!
Excerpt by Peter Forbes, from A Man Apart
"At that moment I needed encouragement like I needed food. I wanted to apply myself to meaningful work that felt real, and to ideas that were part of a long story of progressive change.
Of all the human forces of good and evil, encouragement may be the most powerful. It is the energy that runs from human to human to help us do better, to reach for something we cannot grasp at the moment. Gandhi asked his people in India to weave their own cloth, not because they needed more cloth but because they needed to imagine they could be free of British rule.
Learning how to manifest and create something from within myself helped me see how I could be more intentional with my own life. I wanted to find out what was real inside of me, what might truly be of my own making, and how to offer that to myself - and to others."