Serve somebody
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“You’re gonna have to serve somebody.” —Bob Dylan
In 1927, a young physicist named Werner Heisenberg imagined something both deeply strange and profoundly important about the way our universe might be constructed.
Thinking about electrons—tiny pieces of matter or energy that have no inherent structure—he proposed an idea that struck some his peers as absurd at first glance.
What if these things don’t always exist, but only come into being when something or someone is interacting with them?
If that’s true, Heisenberg added, then there’s something just as strange that can be concluded about electrons. As Carlo Rovelli sums up in Seven Brief Lesson on Physics: “When nothing disturbs it, it is not in any precise place. It’s not in a ‘place’ at all.”
Further, we can’t even pinpoint a position of these things. At best, we can know the probability of them jumping in and popping up.
So why am I giving you this primer on the Heisenberg Principle?
Because (at least in a figurative sense) it reminds us that presence and observation affect reality.
We are similarly shaped and reshaped constantly by our interactions with others.
Always? No. But it’s probable.
Can you measure it? No.
But it’s a feel thing. As Leonard Cohen once put it: “the feel that this ain’t exactly real, or it’s real, but it ain’t exactly there.”
Sometimes when we crash into each other—much like those weird electrons—we turn out differently than before in unnameable ways.
That’s why I continue to believe our only true purpose is to be here for one another. To serve. Because when we do, it has a way of affecting others in ways we can never fully anticipate.
This newsletter reminds me of that on an ongoing basis. A few weeks ago, I asked readers in the PS section to tell me how CreativeBoost helps them. And boy did I get some replies!
There’s Jen, who writes: “your newsletter is like a conversation I’m having with you. So often, there’s a positive message in there that I need to hear and be reminded of.”
And Juliana: “I like the way you have brought the idea of shadow into personal problem-solving, that not all problems are meant to be solved. And often the dark issues take care of themselves…”
Truth be told, most times CreativeBoost is simply my travelogue: little notes from myself to myself, to remind me of things.
I could just keep it all to myself, much the way I used to journal. But just like those weird little electrons, something curious happens with all things creative when we release ideas out into the world. They are transformed.
No longer ours, they become things that reshape the fabric of our perception. As Austin Kleon puts it succinctly: “it changes what you see (https://austinkleon.com/2019/05/29/it-changes-what-you-see/) .”
They help others in ways we might never expect.
My good friends Ilesh and Danielle remind me of that—giving me more credit than I think I deserve—when they write: “you’ve helped us with your creativity and your amazing insight into solving problems.”
Then there’s Stephen, who writes: “Like a lot of people, I used to think creativity was just an art thing. But you remind me that it’s a mindset anyone can use. And I use it plenty now.”
So go make a difference: serve somebody.
Very best, Patrick
This concludes the Spring season of CreativeBoost. This newsletter now goes on its annual summer hiatus. See you in the Fall!
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