One of my favourite movies of all time is Kiki’s Delivery Service. Over the years, as I grew older, I made it a ritual to rewatch it at least once every year. The more I watched, the more I could relate to the struggle of young Kiki. An ambitious girl who dreams of conquering the outside world by doing what she loves the most. But as the film goes, Kiki grasps the reality. In one scene, she tells Tombo, “Flying used to be fun until I started doing it for a living.” This one line is where I return, again and again. This line that apparently has no potential to be an epic dialogue, that sheepishly passes under your breath without even announcing its presence or creating any anticipation, is the line that keeps me awake at night. Whenever I hear this line, I pause the movie and close my eyes. I try to remember my long-lost love for writing, how it felt when a topic or incident ignited an itch within me to pick up a pen and scribble my thoughts on paper, turning them from metaphysical concepts to a narrative that you can trace with your finger. The line also has a sharp pang of realism that pierces through my soul. Since I have turned my hobby of writing into a job, I have only felt overwhelming pressure and stress to meet the deadlines. I hardly had the chance to stop and enjoy the process as I had to mass-produce one write-up after another. The articles I produced helped me to improve my material poverty, but they did not help with what Miyazaki calls spiritual poverty. According to Miyazaki, in today’s world, “economic independence does not necessarily include spiritual independence.” In Kiki’s Delivery Service, Miyazaki tried to impart his wisdom to Kiki and to us as well through Ursula, the young artist. In the scene where Ursula and Kiki are having a heartfelt conversation, Ursula mentions spirit. The spirit is what makes her paint and helps Kiki fly. But what exactly is this spirit that helps us remain in love with our hobbies even after we turn it into a career?
Unveiling The Secret Behind Spiritual Poverty
I believe that by spirit, Hayao Miyazaki indicates the emotional interplay within oneself. Therefore, the gradual decay of one’s spirit can be explained through the concept of emotional pain. To describe emotional pain, I would like to borrow the definition specified by Julia DiGangi in her book Energy Rising. DiGangi interprets emotional pain as an all-encompassing word for any negative emotional experience like stress, anxiety, pressure, fear, self-consciousness, struggle, anger, jealousy, disappointment, inadequacy, frustration, worry or embarrassment. The reason for bringing all these negative emotions under one umbrella term is that the brain processes these negative emotions in similar ways. Whenever we experience these sensations, a key network in our brain called the frontolimbic circuit is activated. However, DiGangi makes another crucial distinction regarding emotional pain. She predominantly focuses on the pain we inflict upon ourselves and hence has certain control over them. She calls this pain of self-betrayal- the times when we create pain by abandoning or forsaking ourselves- self-division. Now, how exactly do spiritual poverty and self-division relate when we transform our hobbies into careers?
A hobby, by definition, is something you pursue out of your job for relaxation. It may or may not have any productive value. It is something we do entirely for our happiness and contentment. But the moment we turn it into a job, we open it for scrutiny and evaluation. It no longer remains a private affair. However, we often forget to reassess our energy towards our former hobby, which is now our job.
For instance, as a creative writer, you may feel a certain way about an incident but when you write as an employee of an organisation, you have to keep your personal ideology aside and prioritize the organisational values. And this may sometimes create self-division within you if you have not reassessed your energy. The fact that you want to write something but have to write something else due to your professional commitment divides your inner energy and weakens your energy. Persistent weakening of energy results in spiritual poverty. One physical manifestation of this spiritual poverty is burnout.
Understanding Emotional Power
If emotional pain is self-division, then emotional power is wholeness. DiGangi asserts that emotional power means we have taken the thing that could have destroyed us and turned it into the very evidence of our empowerment. Another way to describe emotional power is worthiness. Worthiness means we believe in our inherent wholeness, that all of us belong and all of us have value. Not just the happy parts, the good parts, but the challenging parts too.
It may seem emotional power and emotional pain are opposite to each other, but in reality, they are inextricably connected. Emotional pain brings out the scope of creating emotional power from it. For instance, when you are creating articles for your job, but you do not connect to your creation, it does not necessarily mean you are producing bad write-ups. But what it means is that with every write-up, you are dividing yourself from your true energy. And as a result, at one point, you will hit an energy low and become unable to create anything at all. In order to avoid this division of energy, you need to gather your energy again. One way to do so is by reassessing the inspiration behind your writing. Remind yourself why you chose this as a career in the first place. If it is overworking that is dividing your energy, then listen to your inner need for rest and relaxation. Allow yourself to take a break and make yourself believe that you are worthy of taking a small break before it is too late.
Gaining emotional power does not necessarily mean being devoid of any negative emotions. It means that you are able to correctly predict the low in your energy and take appropriate actions to regain that lost energy. Only when you have your full emotional power, you will be able to reach spiritual independence that will help you to remain in love with your hobby-cum-job.
Author: Nayeema Nusrat Arora
