Like any previous year, 2012 arrived expected, courted and welcome. We dedicated in its name loud feasts and concealed fears, inspired fantasies and accurate estimates, we paid tribute to it with our rituals and plans, we presented to it all our old-time and newborn hopes.
As any previous year, 2012 arrived laden with predictions, forecasts and expectations. Economists and astrologers, politicians and environmentalists, scientists and financiers presented their theories in a race designed to answer one question: will the world make a step towards something better in 2012? Or we will be one year closer to the end of illusions? Man generally does not like uncertainty. It makes him feel small, insecure and vulnerable. Man strives to predict and to anticipate events, to lend (at least in his concepts) certain predictability in the course of the unpredictable universe.
So 2012, the year of the Water Dragon, was depicted as the year of movement, energy and dramatic changes. Human nature expects from the mythical creature to trigger these changes towards a happy end direction. Men’s indestructible "I" is charged with the potential of hope, and each of the seven billion inhabitants of Earth owns by right the chance at stake to survive crashes, conflicts and disasters. In the vast majority of cases this chance is unlikely to occur. However, in the short span of personal existence the individual bears the long-term consciousness of mankind. Scientists see in this a genetically inbuilt mechanism for preservation of the species. Religions see hope. Philosophers - sense. Poets - inspiration. Whatever word we choose, this amazing capacity of consciousness to exceed the dimensions of material events, determines to a great extent our ability to be human beings.
The balance of any period of life inevitably contains an assessment of objective events, but also a personal background of expectations, aspirations, disappointments or hopes, which colours these events in a unique way for everyone of us. So each next sheet of past year’s calendar is actually a blank page on which we can project our presence in the ever-changing world.
2012 invaded our lives categorically, dramatically, and at moments - fiercely. It brought a reversal of social and natural layers, ideas and concepts. Hurricanes, floods and earthquakes occurred as a reminder of how fragile our presence can be on our planet Earth. Financial and political crises, unemployment, social unrest in various parts of the world highlight both the present days and the foreseeable future. Yes, the encounter with 2012 is neither easy nor serene. At first glance it seems that this year gives us no special opportunity. Just like the previous one. And like the next one in order, already approaching.
Then what is the impulse that generates the next step, the next thought, the next breath? After all, since ancient times there have always been thinkers and prophets who have kept saying that the world has reached the end of its abilities? Saying that knowledge, morality, law and society (now we can add nature to the list) are in decline, and we will be only witnesses to destruction? So are not these conclusions based on obvious facts and verified knowledge in every consequent age?
To my mind, the impulse that keeps us going is actually what we do not know. Because beneath the layers named "experience", there exists the infinite space of things unknown, unfamiliar, untested, not yet lived, not yet felt, unproven, unfulfilled. That space – the potential of all that has not been, but may be, gives a direction to our existence. It lights up in us the incessant energy of creation, trying, starting from scratch. Sometimes we give a name to that energy. We call it "inspiration”.
Inspiration is not a privilege reserved for artists. There has always been and there will be a group of people lit up by inspiration. Those are people who put love and creativity in their work, whatever it may be. They may be doctors, teachers, carpenters, scientists, gardeners and any others. For all of them work is an endless adventure, as long as they can see more and more new challenges in it. They have preserved their curiosity, despite efforts and damage. For them each new found answer is the dawn of future questions. Because any knowledge that does not nurture new issues, quickly dries up and dies. And inspiration, whatever it means, springs from the eternal "I do not know."
These four short words "I do not know" expand the space of our lives, urging us to seek new answers, new actions, forms and content. They are the engine of any work. They are the formula that clears the way for discoveries and insights, and gives an impetus to any creative energy.
Some time ago I heard a definition of poetry, which looked like this: "Poetry happens when one word meets another for the first time." It is a simple but charming definition which tells us something about how poetry works and in a broader sense - how art works. And maybe - even more broadly - about how life functions.
Very often, when we are fixed on our expectations, on planned but elusive issues, we overlook the gifts that each completed day has brought. What we get is not necessarily what we wanted. But often the received could be more wonderful than the expected, if we just open your senses to it. The flow of existence is alive when one event meets another for the first time.
I mentioned earlier that inspiration is not a privilege only for artists. However, people who are truly dedicated to creativity, know also to the highest extent the silence when one expects his own self, the painful questions, the looking for answers which, once found, have proved insufficient. Such people see in answers not a fortress for their arguments, but a way. Yet they keep on building this way also for the others around them.
So poets, writers, storytellers, filmmakers, artists have an important role to play in society. They make us see things in a different light, they give new shape to our experience, to the way in which we relate to the world and other people, they help us to put up with loneliness, suffering and death. They extend the scope of our perceptions, highlighting important aspects of reality and deepening our knowledge of human conditions. They recreate situations with which we can identify, enriching us with images that stimulate new thoughts from which we can learn.
Has the world really changed so much from that distant day when Confucius said that it is better to light a little candle than to curse the darkness?
As long as there are people in the world who say "I do not know," there will always be others to seek answers. Doubts, discoveries, and doubts after discoveries - no matter how successful - they all possess an eternal quality - to teach us to think creatively. In our age surfeited with information, it is quite an accomplishment.
With each of us the world is born anew. Behind the apparent repetition of things there is an infinite variety of characters, situations and opportunities. No cloud is the same as the previous, no stone and no tree. No day and no night after it. No thought and no dream. And most of all - no existence. To each of us the world is happening for the first time and that is the biggest challenge. But where there is a challenge, there is hope. The hope that this time you can put more inspiration into things, more wisdom, truth and love. People dedicated to creativity, know that best.
It seems that in 2012 too, there is still a chance for our world, weary of controversy. And that you and me can do something about that.
Thousands of years ago the Thracian tribes inhabiting the Balkan Peninsula, had a remarkable custom. Man dropped a little pebble every day into a large clay pot. If the day was happy, the person dropped a white stone. If it was a bad day, it was marked in black. So day after day the patient mosaic of life was arranged in that vessel - black and white - and when death came, the pot was buried in front of the tomb, to carry into eternity the fragile moments of the way travelled so far. Some of those vessels, found after many centuries, present an exciting testimony of the vagaries of fortune and the fragility of human life. But together, black and white are no longer separate warring colours. Alternating in endless combinations, they create a new colour - the colour of movement.
I wish that the year 2012 could leave more white pebbles in my already half-filled vessel. White is beautiful, white sparks with excellence. But then, what to do with black stones? In the days when I stumbled, when I lost my way, when I did not know the answers? And if I clear the barrel of all these hapless days, will white pebbles be really white?
I like the tension between black and white. It generates the electricity of life, the spark of creation, the path to the next answer, and from it – to the next question. In the end, perhaps it would be enough simply not to allow black to prevail...But even if that happens, let us remember that there always remains the possibility to light another candle. Then the tiny flickering space of its light could wake up new questions…
...As long as the world keeps on asking questions, there is still hope.
Sofia, June 2012
