The Wind that Shakes the Office Building

Here's a physical challenge for you:

Grab a pencil and a piece of paper. Go ahead I'll wait.

Great. Now draw two triangles, one on top the other. The first triangle should have one corner pointed straight up. The second should have one corner pointed straight down. Shade in what you've drawn.

If asked, you'd probably say that you just drew a star, and you'd be right. But you wouldn't be totally right, because you haven't just drawn a star. While putting pencil to paper, you've actually created two things: a star and the space that isn't the star. The un-star. The non-star.

You have no choice but to do so, but we rarely think about the act of drawing something as the act of drawing two things. We rarely think about the negative space that is created by changing a blank piece of paper with a few pencil marks. But there it is. You've created a delineation. An image that's nothing but star, and its recursive image thats everything but star.

In art, the two images are called the figure (the star) and the ground (the empty space).

Now the mental challenge: think back to the last time you had to make a decision. It can be as simple as ordering water at a restaurant or as complex and meaningful as asking your girlfriend to marry you. The action that you took, and every action you've ever taken in fact, is just like putting the pencil to that paper. You've created something intentionally and created something else unintentionally, but unavoidably.

Unfortunately, real life isn't as simple as a blank sheet of paper. There are way too many moving parts. So when you make a decision, you might not just be creating two things, but three or four or nineteen hundred. It's difficult to imagine. Which is precisely why we tend not to think in those terms.

Let's say for example that you choose to head West to LA (to make yourself a star). In that instant, you are defining yourself and defining the environment you're in at the same time. You remove yourself from a place - which changes it. You add yourself to a new city - which changes it. And if you're ego wasn't large enough by then, realize that your actions directly define the world around you based on your presence.

You have no choice but to do two things at once. The most important thing to remember is that while you believe you are creating something beautiful, you may also be creating something negative at the same time. The only way to do that, is to not think only of the star you're creating as the artwork - but to focus on the entire sheet of paper. Start to see every action as drawing that star, and the world around you - your entire life - as the sheet of paper, and you'll be on the right track.

Now stop doodling, and go outside. There's a ton of cool stuff to do out there.