Progress in Creativity

The work is advancing, maybe rapidly — recognition arriving, doors opening, the piece landing. Note where the effort belongs: not on chasing the advance, which happens of itself, but on brightening the craft that caused it. The classic misuse of a good stretch is sitting on laurels, luxuriating in the last success, letting the ego begin its measuring — and measurement breeds doubt, doubt breeds grasping effort, and that grasping costs the very independence the work flew on. Line 5 is the central liberation: hold gain and loss at arm's length. Fretting over each small win and setback shrinks the view; released from the scorecard, every undertaking prospers. Keep tending the light, and let noon come.

If you're starting and the advance stalls — trust withheld, first showings met with silence (line 1) — anger would only block the one progress available, the inner kind. Keep making the true thing with a cheerful, generous attitude; confidence not yet extended comes to the maker who didn't demand it, and the calm itself is the qualification. Line 2 speaks to advancing in loneliness: the collaboration or audience that should be here is absent, and sorrow shades the work. Don't buy company at the price of the work — better to go on alone and correct than to force union or copy another's way for comfort. Endured rightly, the isolation is temporary; the accord of line 3 arrives, and what you couldn't do alone gets done together.