The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

April 13Creative Hate

If you love the good thing vitally, enough to give up for it all that one must give up for it, then you must hate the cheap thing just as hard. I tell you, there is such a thing as creative hate! A contempt that drives you through fire, makes you risk everything and lose everything, makes you a long sight better than you ever knew you could be.

Willa Cather—The Song of the Lark (1915)

Today's reading could easily be seen as a judgment of others—you know—“the ones who do contemptible work and who get on as well as you do.” In fact, the character in The Song of the Lark, opera singer Thea Kronborg, is doing just that.

But judging things and others as good or bad or right or wrong is a bit of an assault on your self-reliance because it is based mostly in comparison to others. And you've probably already determined what a trap that is.

But for you, the self-reliant entrepreneur, to “hate the cheap thing just as hard,” you must look inward and ask where you've not remained true, where you've taken shortcuts, where you've gotten along just fine, where you've accepted mediocrity, where you've sold out.

You must be the source of your own “creative hate” when you haven't lived up to the impossibly high standards you've set for yourself. It's so much more work this way, but it will make you “a long sight better than you ever knew you could be.”

Challenge Question

1. Where have you not done your best work recently?