“Feeling” is boundless.
It’s like trying to hold water in your hands.
The moment you think you’ve grasped it, it slips through your fingers.
And yet, we try our hardest to box our feelings into words, into images, into sounds. But I’m sure we can all agree that words never really do feelings justice, do they?
It’s like trying to eat the menu instead of the meal.
The menu can describe the meal, it can point to it, it can make your mouth water….but it is not the meal itself.
Here’s the thing...there are far more indescribable feelings than describable ones.
The entire vocabulary of human language, all the words ever spoken, written, sung….and still, the majority of what we feel remains in a space beyond words. Beyond capture.
Even in adulthood there are feelings that are entirely new.
You’d think by now we’d have experienced the complete spectrum of feelings, but no…
Life has this delightful way of ambushing us with sensations we’ve never encountered before. Feelings without words, without references, without relation.
So as humans, as innate creators, we do the one thing we do best…
We express.
Expression is our attempt at conveying those feelings.
But (and here’s where it gets interesting) expression is always a failed attempt.
And don’t be discouraged by that. This isn’t a bad thing. This is the very nature of expression.
Expression is pointing at the feeling. It’s alluding to the feeling. It’s dancing around the feeling. Getting close enough so that people can catch a glimpse of what it might have felt like. So that we can, just for a moment, revisit something universal that connects all of us.
You paint a painting, and someone looks at it and says, “Yes, I know that feeling.”
But do they know your feeling? Or are they experiencing their own?
The answer is both. And neither. And that’s the beauty of it.
Because even though expression is not the feeling itself…and it can never be the feeling itself….it’s still so achingly beautiful.
Because expression is the way we can package as much of the essence of an infinite feeling into a finite form.
It was a major theme in one of my recent videos.
You see, you’re taking something that has no boundaries, no edges, no beginning or end and you’re translating it into paint on canvas, into notes on a piano, into words on a page, into movement through space.
You’re performing this extraordinary act of compression. Of distillation. Of pure alchemy.
It’s like taking the entire ocean and somehow getting a single drop of it to contain the memory of waves, the taste of salt, the feeling of vastness.
The drop is not the ocean. But it carries the ocean within it.
That's beautiful...
Because that is what you do every time you create.
As a creator you understand, perhaps better than anyone, that the map is not the territory. The painting is not the sunset. The song is not the heartbreak. The sculpture is not the person.
But they point. They suggest. They evoke.
And in that gap…in that space between the infinite feeling and the finite expression…something magical happens.
The person experiencing your art fills that gap with their own infinity.
Their own ocean pours into your drop.
So when you’re working late at night, frustrated because you can’t quite capture what you felt, remember this:
It was never going to be quite right.
The feeling is infinite. Your medium is finite.
But that limitation is not a weakness. It’s the very thing that makes expression possible at all.
You’re not failing when you can’t perfectly capture the feeling. You’re succeeding at something far more interesting…
You’re creating a bridge between your inner infinite and someone else’s inner infinite.
And for a moment…just a moment…those two infinities recognize each other.
That’s what art is.
So go ahead. Keep failing beautifully. Keep pointing at the stars. Keep dancing around infinity.
Because even though your pointed finger is not the stars, without your finger, no one would know where to look.
Stay creative,
