There’s a lesson I keep learning, over and over, whether I’m sketching, writing, or just sitting still: no one can walk the path for you.
You learn this in Zen practice—life doesn’t hand out roadmaps. It doesn’t promise that if you just follow steps 1 through 8, you’ll reach enlightenment or a perfect watercolor. It says: sit. Breathe. Pay attention. And then figure it out for yourself.
That same principle has reshaped how I approach my creative life. I study. I learn. I admire the masters. But when it’s time to make something, I have to let all of that fall away and just do it. My way. Because that’s the only way anything real ever gets made.
Growing up in the U.S. educational system, I learned a very specific idea about how learning was supposed to work. You take a class—maybe a whole stack of them if the subject is complicated. You do all the assignments, get good grades, and then the reward comes: approval, success, maybe even mastery.
But life isn’t like that.
A lot of the most important things—especially creativity—aren’t taught in school at all. And even when they are, it’s often too late. Many schools don’t offer arts programs anymore, and if they do, they’re treated as optional, extra, nice-but-not-essential. So you grow up thinking the real creative work will come later, maybe in college.
But by then, the habits and experiences you need have been buried under years of expectation. You’ve trained yourself to wait for instructions, for feedback, for someone else to tell you you’re doing it right.
And when you finally do begin—maybe years later—it hits you: you’re starting from scratch. There’s no shortcut. If you want to be skilled, you have to put in the hours. Not metaphorical hours. Real ones.
I feel that sometimes. I feel the weight of starting late. I sometimes wish I hadn’t pursued an engineering degree just because it was a “worthwhile” career. I wish I’d given myself permission to follow the things that lit me up. What I really needed, though, was to find Zen.
But I didn’t find it until I hit my 30s. Meditation didn’t make much sense at first. It took years to explore the teachings and figure out which parts resonated with me. But eventually, something settled inside me. A realization:
There is no one path from A to B. You just have to go through.
Like a five-year-old who’s just discovered crayons. Like someone who’s never heard of “the rules.” You show up. You try things. You mess them up. You try again.
That’s shoshin. Beginner’s mind. And you have to return to it again and again. Because no matter how many lessons you’ve studied, or how many credentials you’ve stacked up, the only path that works is the one you walk yourself.
Everyone else is only ever telling you what worked for them.
When I create something that doesn’t work, or feels ugly, or falls apart—which happens more often than I like--that’s not failure. That’s movement. That’s progress. You need hundreds of those moments. Thousands, even. They’re how the path gets made. If you avoid them, erase them, or try to skip past them, you’re actually stepping backward.
Following your own path isn’t romantic. It’s not always pretty. But it is truth. It’s reality.
It’s Zen.
