A Selfless Art

Happiness is often misunderstood and therefore undervalued. Following Matthieu Ricard and other Buddhist writers, I have come to see it not as a passing elation dependent on external events but an inner state developed through skill and practice. This happiness is not selfish: it is a quality that can benefit others.

In this sense, I have never been happier than when I am facilitating co-creation. (I’m not sure I like ‘facilitating’ but I haven’t yet thought of a better word for what I’m doing when I’m working with others in a creative process.) I think that situation nurtures happiness because it allows the self to step back and become calm.

In advance of a workshop, I’m anxious. I’ll be meeting new people, or people I don’t know very well, and they will have expectations I’m not sure I can meet. Preparation helps deal with anxiety: how to get there, materials and tools, planning. Bit it’s not like a teacher’s lesson plan. I don’t have objectives or outcomes in mind. I don’t have a timetable or even a route. Usually, I’ll just bring an opening idea, ready to abandon it and respond to what other people might say. No, my planning is a kind of imagination—thinking and feeling, tuning in to possibilities while trying to limit my own expectations.

I quite like the anxiety. I’ve always thought it keeps me honest, in the sense of motivating me to do all I can to make the session rewarding and not taking anything for granted. The day I stop feeling anxious before a session is the day I should stop doing this work.

But the anxiety evaporates almost as soon as the workshop begins. Why? Because it requires my fullest concentration. There is a great deal to do all at once: unpack that opening idea, learn people’s names, pay attention to the feeling in the room, open myself to what each person might be saying (or not saying) when they speak and in their presence, notice what messages my own body and emotions are giving me, and so on. I have to be ready to adjust or ditch whatever I brought with me and think of alternatives that better suit what people want or hope for. I have to remember to pause, to give people breaks (something I tend to forget in the energy of the moment). And I have to do all those things, and others, at the same time, for a long time.

It’s is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done but also one of the lightest. The situation demands all my attention, concentration, focus. It is, I think, what some people call ‘flow‘. The nearest I get to it outside a workshop space is in writing, but it’s hard to keep that up for more than an hour or two. In co-creation, I can maintain it for several hours, for a day or a week even, with the natural breaks we all need. I think it’s because, although I’ve been writing this as if everything depends on me, that is not at all what is going on. Everyone in the room is contributing presence, energy, ideas. The centre of the group shifts constantly (unless there are discordant or egotistical voices, which it is usually my task to defuse). It is not just the artwork that is being co-created: it is our shared experience, it is the present, it is reality.

Although creating the space and possibility for this to happen brings anxiety beforehand and exhaustion afterwards, it also brings me as much happiness as anything in life because it is selfless. In co-creation, I forget my self and my own bad thinking. For a time, I’m no longer the centre of my own world, just a node in a living, creative network. For a time, I am self-less, and happy.