Trauma is at the core of who are are as people. If we transform it, we can become unstoppable in what we’re trying to accomplish. If we don’t transform our trauma, then our lives become its by-produce.*
Ben Hardy

Trauma is our common experience.

Turn towards it and there is the possibility of transformation,
Turn away and it will likely ever haunt us.

Turn towards and we begin to free our imaginations:

We use imagination not to escape from reality but to join it, and this exhilarates us because of the distance between and an apprehension of the real.**

We collect our treasures held in common with others.
Our commonplaces, though, promise uniqueness:

Each one is unique to its creator’s particular interest but they almost always include passages found in other texts, sometimes accompanied by their compiler’s responses.^

From such common things, placed together
In new ways, emerges a uniqueness:

I don’t think of it as art – I just make things I like bigger, assuming that if I like them some other people might too. Some do, some don’t, and that’s alright too.^^

When we find each other, as I think we must,
then we create a communitas of possibility for others.
We all need help:

“Scenius”: a whole scene of people who are supporting each other, looking at each other’s work, copying from each other, speaking ideas, and contributing ideas.*^

We need what only you can bring.
You are a once in a lifetime possibility:

There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.^*

*From Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent;
**From Iris Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good;
^From Wikipedia: A Commonplace Book;
Corita Kent, from Austin Kleon’s blog: Corita Day;
*^Brian Eno; From Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work;
^*Martha Graham, from Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds.