At one point or another, if you do art or creative work of any kind, you are bound to reach a stage where you feel whether you are good enough at the things you do. This thoughts arises out of a competitive spirit, of looking at what others are doing and judging your own work against them. I wrote about this in a previous post. Sometimes you look at the works of others for inspiration but end up getting demoralized by their great work, you then start thinking about why you are doing it in the first place since you will never be better than them. The problem here lies between you and them—it is about the illusion of the idea of separation. The truth is wherever you look, you are going to find someone better than you are; it is due to the workings of the mind, the comparisons and the feelings of never having enough.

If you are aware, you will realize that thinking in this way saps you of creative energy. No matter what skill level you are at, you cannot improve if you lack the creative energy to work on your craft. All these comparisons and competitive feeling you get does nothing other than to slow you down towards what you already know you are going to do with your life. Anything that drains you of precious creative energy is a waste of time. A better way to go about this is to think in terms of cooperation. Say if you are a photographer, it feels like there are millions of photographers out there and most of them are more talented than you are. Rather than thinking you are a soloist trying to fight against all of them for a limited piece of pie, why not think that you are part of these amazing group that is creating beauty for the world? You are like an indispensable part of the whole orchestra, and the beautiful part of being in an orchestra is that you work with others to complete the music. The music is the point, not the solo instrument, although a solo instrument can also play beautiful music but it won’t be as grand and as beautiful as the whole symphony when it is harmonious. Imagine that every photographer is working together to produce images so that someone somewhere are able to see the things they can only dream of seeing. It is impossible to fully explore every corner of the world alone in a lifetime,  so this is where all photographers come together to share their part of the world. In every images, what you see are possibilities and these possibilities cannot exist if no one is sharing.

The flowers I am sharing here can be beautiful as a single flower but a cluster of them together takes it to another level. There are going to be people who will get all the limelight and you might not, but it is beyond your control. Fame and fortune are given by others and it can also be easily taken away. The only thing that you can do is to work on your craft and give that unique part of yourself to the world so that someone else can benefit from your existence. Imagine all unique personalities each contributes their best to the whole, that can only be co-creation at its best and it will forever change humanity in a way that is hard to fathom.