Really, Leah

Dear Creatives,

Happy Love Week! This week, many of us will celebrate the virtues of love with heart-shaped candies, bouquets of roses, greeting cards, and candlelight dinners. While this is a tradition, I trust that many of us celebrate love all year, thinking of wonderful ways to express our affection for those we care about the most. My hope for you and me is that we will approach our creative work with the same passion year-round and not relegate our love for creating to one day or even one week out of the year. 

If I were a regretful person, I would regret not pursuing what I love much earlier. As a child, I remember loving books and reading, writing short stories and commercial jingles, drawing fashions fit for a runway, and prancing around my room like an Alvin Ailey dancer. However, when I hit my teens, no parent, guidance counselor, or English teacher ever suggested I pursue creative arts. They were more impressed with my math and science skills and whether I would become a doctor or a lawyer. I did neither. Although I thought about them both, even considering becoming an actuarial scientist and other high-dollar careers, none have ever excited me the way the arts did and still do. 

Over time, I have learned that it’s not enough to be talented because talent will never keep us tethered to something our heart is not in. We need a strong reason to remain because our yearning for what we love never disappears. 

My heart aches for young people and the young at heart who are struggling with carving out their future, especially for creatives. But they need not fear, as I did, that they will become poor, starving artists. Making a living, especially as a writer, can pay more than the bills and open inconceivable doors. 

Research has proven this to me. And wisdom agrees. Proverb 18:16 states, “Your gift makes room for you.” But don’t take my word for it. Allow me to illustrate the success of another literary great. 

You may have heard his name mentioned in conjunction with the Super Bowl last week. Although he was not on the field or in attendance by any stretch of the imagination, his words and his brother’s composition were present, front and center, before the coin toss and the kickoff. His name is James Weldon Johnson, and he is the author of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” 

Mr. Johnson was born way before you or me in 1871 in Jacksonville, Florida, and he loved and studied creative writing. He used the art form, as reflected in his resume, to weave in poems, theater music, presidential and empowerment speeches, a novel, and a memoir. Look up his resume, and you will see. (I’ve created an illustration of some of his accomplishments).

More than Johnson’s unique background—born to free parents, raised in the South, and achieving several notable firsts such as joining the Florida Bar and serving as a U.S. diplomat—he allowed his heart to spill out through his gift for portraying the merits of Black Americans.

While marveling at the magnitude of James Weldon Johnson’s storied life, I want to convey that giving ourselves over to our heart’s desires can take us places and put us into positions we’ve never imagined—not only for the creative but also for those who experience the work created. 

I’m thinking of one of my favorite poems by Johnson, entitled “The Creation.” Actors, thespians, and theologians alike have delivered those words to stages across continents, stirring audiences with Johnson’s remarkable reinterpretation of Genesis 1–3. Although he has been physically away from this earth since 1938, he still educates and entertains the world. Whether this was his aim, his artistic work lives on.

Johnson is quoted as saying, “But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form.”

Are not those the words of love?

Any unselfish motivation is love in my book, which is why I will continue to stress that you and I keep writing what we know and love, and creating what we enjoy. When we only chase money for fulfillment or status, we risk losing our authenticity, and our work becomes drudgery. However, when we know that our work, whether in the creative arts or not, is a gift from God, we can work from a place of rest. Our work won’t even feel like work. We, like Johnson, will only want to produce from the heart. Then, you know what else? Our gifts will make room for us, too. 

Never stop doing what God puts on your heart. XO! Really, 

Leah