Zum Sehen geborn
Zum Schauen bestellt
“Born to see, my task is to watch” – Goethe’s Faust II
my children and my sister's children 1977
“Twenty-five centuries ago, Plato wrote that the most important task for a society was to teach the young to find pleasure in the right objects. Now Plato was conservative even for his times, so he had rather definite ideas about what “those things” were that young people should learn to enjoy. We are much too sophisticated in this day and age to have strong feelings in the matter. Yet we probably agree that we would feel better if our children learned to enjoy cooperation rather than violence; reading rather than stealing; chess rather than dice; hiking rather than watching television. In other words, no matter how relativistic and tolerant we have become, we will have priorities. And we do want the next generation to share those priorities. Finally, many of us suspect that the next generation will not preserve what we value unless they now enjoy it to some extent.
What metaphors do bridges bring to mind?
It is much more difficult to learn to enjoy doing things that were discovered recently in our evolution, like manipulating symbolic systems by doing math or science or writing poetry or music, and learning from doing these things about the world and about ourselves.
Children grow up believing that football players and rock singers must be happy and envy the stars of the entertainment world for what they think must be fabulous, fulfilling lives. Asked what they would like to do when they grow up, most of them would choose to be athletes or entertainers. They don’t realize until much later, if at all, that the glamour of those lives is vulgar tinsel, that to be like them leads anywhere but to happiness.
Neither parents or schools are very effective at teaching the young to find pleasure in the right things. Adults, themselves often deluded with infatuation with fatuous models, conspire in the deception. They make serious tasks seem dull and hard, and frivolous ones exciting and easy. Schools generally fail to teach how exciting, how mesmerizingly beautiful science or mathematics can be; they teach the routine of literature or history rather than the adventure.
It is in this sense that creative individuals live exemplary lives. They show how joyful and interesting complex symbolic activity is. They have struggled through marshes of ingnorance, deserts of disinterest, and with the help of parents and a few visionary teachers they have found themselves on the other side of the known. They have become pioneers of culture, models of what men and women of the future will be – if there is to be a future at all. It is by following their example that human consciousness will grow beyond the limitations of the past, the programs that genes and cultures have wired into our brains. Perhaps our children, or their children, will feel more joy in writing poetry and solving theorems than in being passively entertained. The lives of these creative individuals reassure us that it is not impossible.” – M. Csikszentmihalyi
I was called to be an artist. And as an old old midwife said to me "If the Lord wants you to do something, you won't have no good luck' til you do." So, here I am, sharing what I love, longing to illuminate the work of art, which is everywhere.
Charleston Through an Artist's eye 
I don’t know. A lot of people tried to tell me I “should” enjoy solving algebraic equations, and I never did. And whoever said mating and reproducing was easy to enjoy was never married for very long. ;) I think telling anyone what they should find enjoyable–whether science, math, art, or sex–is fruitless. Our essential selves know what’s really pleasurable to us, what brings us deep joy. And let me tell you, vulgar frivolity is my favorite kind. If you’re deluded with infatuation, come sit next to me.
This book is the results of thirty years of research and interviews with creative people in every field of work (scientist, poets, artists, economists) particularly those who have significantly contributed to the culture within their domain of influence. They also had to be 60 years old, which eliminated people who lived riskier lifestyles and died younger, yet who also significantly contributed to the culture. Math is not where your heart and your creative gifts are; nor is math mine, but this research is riveting and surprising. I also know exactly what he means by ‘flow’ which is to be lost in your creative endeavor. And about the inspiration of place and beauty (it creates new connections by shaking things around in your visual field). And taking walks to let ideas incubate (or drive) or for me, mowing at Rosy:) Thanks for reading and responding, Hadley!