Do What You Are Inspired To Do Right Away

It might not be the perfect time, but it might be the only time.

Once, I declared writing essays was as indispensable as breathing 15 times per minute. Typing reveals my beliefs, relieves stress, and rectifies my arguments. The following week, I got inspired to do something else and didn't write for two months. 

Inspiration comes from "inspirare," meaning "to breathe into." In The Creative Act, eight-time Grammy-award-winning producer Rick Rubin says we must empty our lungs before they can draw in air. When inspiration blesses us, we must give it space to unfold. I choose when to write but not when to be inspired. 

Inspiration drew me to redesign my career path during these two months:

• Stopped working full-time

• Enrolled in St. John's Master's in Liberal Arts

• Clarified the non-utilitarian reasons why I work

• Redefined the type of client I wanted to work with

Inspiration compelled me to these actions on this occasion, but it has sent me elsewhere. I have also been inspired to write an essay idea past midnight, dance 20 hours a week, work 15-hour days, and take months of work. I could’ve decided that it was not the right moment to feel inspired, that watching another video of a Capuchin monkey unwrapping an Amazon package was a better use of my time. But I didn't know if inspiration would endow me again. Nobody can.

The story goes that Tchaikovsky produced his Symphony No. 6, Pathétique, in three weeks without interruption. In a letter to his nephew, Tchaikovsky says he did it in a state of nervous illness. The symphony demanded to be born, as playwright Eugène Ionesco might say. To Ionesco,

"A work of art is born for the sake of being born." "It imposes itself on its author, demands existence without asking or considering whether society has called for it." 

We owe the Vedic texts influencing Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Neo-Paganism to inspiration. 

The Vedas, comprising over 20,000 verses, were orally transmitted for almost two millennia by anonymous rishis. According to the Post-Vedic tradition of Hinduism, rishis were enlightened individuals who attained supreme truth and eternal knowledge through intense meditation (tapas), which they expressed as hymns. This makes the Vedas a part of Shruti literature, which means 'heard' literature. Though rational and practical, rishis relied on their imagination and inspiration to make their discoveries.

Rishis weren't guaranteed anything from meditating for decades, just like inspiration doesn't guarantee anything to us or the most notable thinkers, artists, writers, scientists, and musicians who religiously follow it. But it is by believing that inspiration might get us somewhere that it can bless us. Take advantage of the next moment of inspiration by dropping everything else. It might not be the perfect time, but it might be the only time.