I recently read The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help by Amanda Palmer. She’s a musician who achieved a great deal of notoriety by being the first performing artist to raise over $1 million on Kickstarter to fund an album of hers. The book came as a result of a popular TED Talk she did on the same subject.
I doubt I will ever be able to apply all the principles of trusting and letting others help in the way Amanda has. But it’s a wonderful challenge to consider. She sums up the book and this need to trust, connect and simply ask for help this way:
“…this book is not about seeing people from safe distances—that seductive place where most of us live, hide, and run to for what we think is emotional safety. The Art of Asking is a book about cultivating trust and getting as close as possible to love, vulnerability, and connection. Uncomfortably close. Dangerously close. Beautifully close. And uncomfortably close is exactly where we need to be if we want to transform this culture of scarcity and fundamental distrust. Distance is a liar. It distorts the way we see ourselves and the way we understand each other.”
What I found particularly relevant in the book was her approach to capturing the creative process as being one where you collect, connect and share. As she puts it:
“You may have a memory of when you first, as a child, started connecting the dots of the world. Perhaps outside on a cold-spring-day school field trip, mud on your shoes, mentally straying from the given tasks at hand, as you began to find patterns and connections where you didn’t notice them before. You may remember being excited by your discoveries, and maybe you held them up proudly to the other kids, saying: did you ever notice that this looks like this? The shapes on this leaf look like the cracks in this puddle of ice which look like the veins on the back of my hand which look like the hairs stuck to the back of her sweater… Collecting the dots. Then connecting them. And then sharing the connections with those around you. This is how a creative human works. Collecting, connecting, sharing. “
She goes on to note how some people are best at collecting — noticing the details others miss, having experiences that then become the raw materials for poetry or songs, examining a scene until the truth of the place is revealed.
Others thrive on connecting the dots:
“…think of a sculptor who hammers away for a year on a single statue, a novelist who works five years to perfect a story, or a musician who spends a decade composing a single symphony—connecting the dots to attain the perfect piece of art.”
Finally, there are those who most enjoy sharing: the writer who puts her work out there in print or online, the painter who hangs his work for others to see, the performer who reveals aspects of her own life and ours as well through a live show.
What I love about this construct of collect, connect and share is that it applies not only to creativity, but to travel. One of the best points of synthesis between what occurs on a trip and what changes in us when we return is our ability to take what we’ve collected while traveling, connect the dots in creative ways when we get back and then share the result with others.
Too often, we think that the sharing part only applies to showing our photos or having others read our travel blogs. But the wonder of great travel is that the experience seeps into every aspect of our lives. Thus, when you come back and make all the unlikely connections between what happened on the trip and where you are now, you begin to see how your travel experience affects how you relate to others, how you go about your work, how you spend your leisure time and even how you learn to serve others in new ways.
Sharing can manifest itself in every area of your life. And you’ll be better at sharing if you’ve been more intentional in collecting and connecting along the way. It’s a rewarding way to think about trips and creativity and frankly, a better way to travel.
Thanks, Amanda.
