Linchpin_ Are You Indispensable_ - Seth Godin [37]
work each day.
Gifts and Art and Emotional Labor
Art is created by an artist.
Art is unique, new, and challenging to the status quo. It's not decoration, it's something
that causes change.
Art cannot be merely commerce. It must also be a gift. The artist creates his idea knowing
that it will spread freely, without recompense. Sure, the physical manifestation of the art
might sell for a million dollars, but that painting or that song is also going to be enjoyed
by someone who didn't pay for it.
Art is not limited to art school, or to music or even to the stage. Art is any original idea
that can be a gift. It takes art to make a mom happy on the first day of nursery school. It
takes art to construct a business model that permits people in the United States to play
poker online. It takes art to construct the plans for the English Chunnel.
Most of all, art involves labor. Not the labor of lifting a brush or typing a sentence, but
the emotional labor of doing something difficult, taking a risk and extending yourself.
It's entirely possible that you're an artist.
Sometimes, though, caught up in the endless cycle of commerce, we forget about the gift
nature of art, we fail to do the hard work of emotional labor, and we cease to be artists.
Selling Yourself Short
A day's work for a day's pay (work <=> pay). I hate this approach to life. It cheapens us.
This simple formula bothers me for two reasons:
1. Are you really willing to sell yourself out so cheap? Do you mortgage an entire
(irreplaceable) day of your life for a few bucks? The moment you are willing to sell your
time for money is the moment you cease to be the artist you're capable of being.
2. Is that it? Is the transaction over? If we're even at the end of the day as the formula
says, then you owe me nothing and I owe you nothing in return. If we're even, then there
is no bond, no ongoing connection between us. It's like Hector in Queens. You have
become a day laborer and I have become a day boss.
The alternative is to treasure what it means to do a day's work. It's our one and only
chance to do something productive today, and it's certainly not available to someone
merely because he is the high bidder. A day's work is your chance to do art, to create a
gift, to do something that matters. As your work gets better and your art becomes more
important, competition for your gifts will increase and you'll discover that you can be
choosier about whom you give them to.
When a day's work does not equal a day's pay, that means that at the end of the day, a
bond is built. A gift is given and received, and people are drawn closer, not insulated
from each other.
Passion
Passion is a desire, insistence, and willingness to give a gift. The artist is relentless. She
says, "I will not feel complete until I give a gift." This is more than refusing to do lousy
work. It's an insistence on doing important work.
This relentless passion leads to persistence and resilience in the face of people not
accepting your gift.
The artists in your life are gift-focused, and their tenacity has nothing at all to do with
income or job security. Instead, it's about finding a way to change you in a positive way,
and to do it with a gift. There's a strong streak of intellectual integrity involved in being a
passionate artist. You don't sell out, because selling out involves destroying the best of
what you are.
Consider the case of Ed Sutt. The son of a contractor, Ed grew up helping his dad build
houses--he eventually gave it up when he discovered that his hand was so swollen from
hammering nails while framing new houses that he couldn't even see his knuckles.
Doing research at Clemson University's Wind Load Test Facility, Sutt studied the science
of building and the effect of wind on wood frame houses. Along the way, he visited the
Caribbean and saw the effects of Hurricane Marilyn. Thousands of houses were
destroyed by the hurricane, completely disintegrated by the wind. While it certainly
changed