April 2025
I’ve struggled countless times to take the first step on a new path. Whether that was a new
direction in
my career, a side project, a new relationship. Typically it’s the big things that prove
insurmountable.
There’s a yearning inside to start but the path and sometimes the end isn’t clear at all. Between
that
deep yearning stands a thick impenetrable fog. A fog swirling with a nasty concoction of fears: fear
of
failure, fear of humiliation, fear of choosing wrong, fear of wasted time. A fog, which in my
personal
experience, only thickens over time as I naively realise the strand of rope left in my lifetime
doesn’t
in fact stretch out to infinity. The usual response is either paralysis or exhaustion from running
endless mental simulations in a desperate attempt to clutch at certainty. I’ve demonstrated all
these
patterns of behaviour — innumerable times. I’m still doing it now even, as I take this break from
work
to figure out my next play. Slowly though, I’ve come to realise a simple truth. The fog never fully
disappears. So the only way is to proceed through it.
There are two books in particular that sit by my side constantly and have been a tremendous source
of
encouragement. ‘Starting Point’, which is a collection of essays from Hayao Miyazaki, and Insisting
on
the Impossible, a biography of Edwin Land. From Miyazaki, I have come to learn that great things can
start with nothing more than a spark of desire. It’s enough to take the first step with just that
yearning I previously described. In the essay series “From Idea to Film” he advises up and coming
animators on starting and says “if the shape is amorphous, you can start with a vague yearning…a
certain
sentiment, a slight sliver of emotion — whatever it is”. He goes on to reassure them that all the
details don’t have to be known — “it is fine if, at times, the original starting point of a
full-length
feature film is the image of a girl tilting her head to the side…it doesn’t matter if the story
isn’t
yet complete. The story will follow. Later still the characters will take shape.” Meticulously
mapping
out the steps from idea to final product seems to be just a surefire way to fall victim to analysis
paralysis. Sometimes faith is needed and I think this is what Steve Jobs meant when he said, you
can’t
connect the dots going forward.
Once you’ve started though, how do you finish? We all know too well that finishing is in many ways
just
as hard as beginning. From what I can tell, it seems to boil down to: accept there will inevitably
be
bumps in the road, take it one step at a time, and have faith ambiguity will resolve itself through
the
work. Working in this way takes humility and persistence. Miyazaki says “At times, your work may be
rejected entirely. When I mentioned earlier that you must have the will to go to any length, this is
what I meant. When you draw that first picture, it is only the beginning of an immense journey”.
Surprisingly Edwin Land is not that well known from my experience, but he is the inventor of instant
photography and the Polaroid camera. The idea for instant photography came to Land via an innocent
question from his daughter, “why can’t I see the picture right away?”. Taken aback, he took a long
walk
to ponder this. He describes the moment as follows: “I went for a walk haunted by my daughter’s
question. And during the course of that walk, the question kept coming up. Why not? Why not make a
camera that gave a picture right away? … Strangely, by the end of that walk, the solution to the
problem
had been pretty well formulated. I would say that everything had been, except those few details that
took from 1943 to 1973.” The point here is that it took him 30 years to figure it out and no amount
of
planning could have resolved all the hurdles he was to face. The way he proceeded was just one
single
step at a time “it is a wonderful dream even though the end is a long way off, for there are about
five
thousand steps to be taken before we realize it. and start taking the first ten, and stay making
twenty
after, it is amazing how quickly you get through those five thousand steps.“ Miyazaki also
encourages us
not get bogged down in the salvo of ambiguities that will crop up during the process. You have to
embrace uncertainty and move forward by doing the work. “what kind of world, serious or comedic;
what
degree of distortion; what setting; what climate; what content; what period; whether there is one
sun or
three; what kinds of characters will appear; what is the main theme? …The answers to all these
questions
gradually become clearer as you continue to draw….Draw as many pictures as you can.” Eventually,
“you
keep on coming nearer to giving the world something worth having.”
What’s become increasingly obvious to me is that certainty is an illusion. Everyone who starts and
finishes seems to have developed a tolerance for ambiguity. It’s difficult to wrestle with because
there’s no guarantee of success either to reward this effort and Miyazaki states it bluntly to the
aspiring animators “it holds no guarantees in terms of pay or time”. How will you know though
without
venturing forth? The only guarantee seems to be that the journey will transform you. And perhaps,
that
is all we can ask for.
How do you manage the challenges of beginning and ending?