Elizabeth Gilbert, the best selling author of ''Eat.Pray.Love'', in one of her TED talks, titled- ''Your Elusive Creative Genius'' shares her thoughts about the fear which grips the mortal creative man who has just been labelled a GENIUS..
Her book, 'Eat.Pray.Love' became a runaway success, an international bestseller and that is when she realized that for the rest of her life, any good work she publishes, will always be weighed up against 'Eat.Pray.Love' and if people don't like it as much, she would be labelled as having become less of a GENIUS..
And isn't she right?
Harper Lee published only one book in her entire lifetime and it was the super hit, ''To kill a Mockingbird''. She could not write down anything again, anything as moving and powerful. May be, she suffered from the same fear..
But where does this whole notion of GENIUS come from?
In ancient Rome, creative people, the sculptors, the poets, the architects, the musicians, were believed to be 'Having a Genius' within them for the time they did their best craft. GENIUS was a magical, superhuman spirit.. The people who did something extraordinary, weren't considered to 'Be a Genius'!!
According to a folklore, 'GENIUS' passed from one creative person to another. From one generation to next..
As times changed and science advanced, man became the centre of everything- the good and the bad.. And the concept evolved from 'Having a Genius' to 'Being a Genius' which has had it's fair share of admiration, narcissism, and a whole new burden of expectations..
But, if we continue to believe 'we have a Genius' rather than 'we are a Genius', it would all be so easy, so modest and so humble..
As the philosophy of the Cosmic energy goes, we indeed do not possess any energy.!! All energy is Universal! You can have it for the time being but you can never hoard it too long!! The GENIUS evolves and gets transformed to another level just like the ENERGY.. And when this Universal Energy which everyone has a hold of momentarily, gets tranformed to an altogether unprecedented levels of artistry, we call it GENIUS!!
This Genius is free, and is not to be burdened by expecatations.. The GENIUS might leave us but the Universal Energy still exists for everyone..
So, is GENIUS- A state of being or a state of work? I prefer the latter..
''There is a GENIUS sleeping within us all! The question is- Do we have enough ENERGY to wake it up?!''
Thanks for reading..
- Devashish Palkar
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