What are you supposed to do?

Where do you have to go?

The Roethke poem I quote says “I learn by going where I have to go.” Well, where do we have to go?

There are two ways to think about that.

One: You go where you feel you have to go, where you are compelled to go by some inner drive.

That’s a poet, baby. Someone who just can’t stand not to do or be who they are, who would rather die, who feels themselves a cosmic fireball burning themselves out from the inside. So they go. Where they have to go.

But there’s also Two: You are forced to go somewhere, and you have to learn in order to survive it.

That’s a soldier, man. Nobody wants to go to war. Nobody wants bad things to happen to them. But you go where you have to go, and you learn.

We’re all doing both. But us creative types, well…

We’re doing both and really feeling it.

The question is, when you get there, what do you do? That’s for you to learn.

Either the going itself teaches you, or you learn because you’re there.

What do you want to do? Is it reasonable? Is it possible? Is it impossible and you’re going to do it anyway?

Well, I have news for you. Any or all of these things is okay. And they’re all needed.

The world needs you now, you creative types, like it hasn’t needed you in 60 years. We’re starving for meaning, like someone who’s only eaten potato chips for 40 years is starving for real food. I promise, people don’t even know they’re hungry for it, but once they get it they’re going to go crazy.

How do you get it to them?

By going where you have to go.

Maybe you have to go hang out with immigrants and tell their stories so people stop thinking of them as “other.”

Maybe you have to paint things so people can see the familiar through another human’s eyes rather than an A-eye.

Maybe you have to write a song that fifty-million people can sing together.

You may not want to do these things. Don’t worry. You’ll have to.

This is where you have to go.