CREATE OR DIE

When I wrote my first shitty ad in my twenties, I was a mess.

I was an “Artist” playing at being an “Entrepreneur.”

In my mind, those worlds were oil and water.

I felt like I was going to split in half.

But what I discovered, and what I’m going to share with you here today, is that the divide between artist and entrepreneur, between “high” and “low” art, between “authentic” and “sell out” is an illusion.

It’s a mindfuck. The residue of archaic either/or constructs society excretes into our brains.

If you feel like the war between the Artist and the Entrepreneur in you is tearing you apart…

Kill the “Artist.”

Kill the “Entrepreneur.”

Become CREATOR.

THAT is your new name.

CREATORS make things of value.

Unbound, unboxed.

Composing a song… writing a line of code… gazing bright into your child’s eyes… ALL OF IT is creation. ALL OF IT is the works of your mind and heart, found and given with strength, love, courage.

Songs, books, manifestos, products, moments, services, gifts… if you do NOT give these, your life goes gray. You lose all meaning.

As men, we have but two options: CREATE OR DIE.

Men shirk creation because creation opens us to ridicule, rejection, mockery. But creation is our fundamental role. You shirk it at uncountable cost.

Our legacy as men is to create life itself: to imbue the very fabric of life with joy, wonder, mystery, exhilaration. For others, and for ourselves.

If your life is not one of rampant creation, thus defined, it is NOT because you have “nothing to offer,” but because you have allowed your fear of rejection to outweigh your desire to give.

When you refrain from creating, you kill your chief spark. Your greatest joy is hidden within your greatest fear, and if you do not pierce the shell, you become insipid, a dusty bottle in an abandoned cellar.

You don’t have to publish a book, write a symphony, or code the next killer app.

That same primal creative force can just as well flow, with as much value rendered, into the memories you create for your children, the comfort your conversation gives a stranger, the look of delight you put on your woman’s face.

In every waking moment, you are either creating or dying.

You are adding joy, solution, and meaning to life, or you are refraining, and thereby opening a black hole that sucks life into the maw.

Call yourself whatever you must call yourself.

Heal whatever you must heal.

Live however you must live.

So long as it leads you to full-hearted creation.

CREATE OR DIE.