In Joy, On Purpose
This could be u, installation by David Hammons at Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles.
“Through purpose, you discover joy."
Those were the words of Laysha Ward, executive vice president of Target, who was receiving an honorary doctorate at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs graduation ceremony. I was there to watch my little sister receive her Master of Public Policy on Saturday, the endcap of a whirlwind trip that started on Tuesday night. It began with a late flight to Denver, then a drive over the mountains to Salida, a beautiful town nestled in the Rockies, to first participate in the Colorado Creative Districts Convening to talk about Springboard for the Arts’ healthcare programs and toolkits, and then to deliver the welcome keynote for the Colorado Creative Industries Summit and share Springboard’s Creative People Power framework. The trip continued with 16 hours in Los Angeles, enough time to stop at Venice Beach, Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, and finally, to watch a dear friend get married. Then a red eye back to Minneapolis for the graduation. Whirlwind. Manic. And all joyful.
Coming off of the trip I’d just been on, with its many conversations, moments of connection and inspiration, those words stuck with me. I’ve thought a lot about purpose over the years, and as an omnivorous arts creator and consumer, cross-sector nonprofiteer, MBA-having inter-disciplinarian, I’ve never found myself perfectly reflected in much of the conversation about purpose. I am not called to a singular vision, to make a great thing, or solve a pressing issue, or build a better mousetrap. If anything, my life has been defined by an ambitious desire to do and try as many things as possible, which feels at odds with the narrative of focus-driven purpose. I know from conversations with fellow artists, peers, and recent graduates asking what they are doing with their lives, I am not alone in this.
But I know where I find joy, and why it is so important. I find joy in the simplest of things, in the freshness of good food, in watching animals and children play, in the wind whipping across my face. I find more complex and nuanced joy in working through difficulties, in seeing people I care about succeed, in bridging solutions, in the often frustrating and demoralizing acts of creation. I know that when we are at our darkest, the promise of a shared joy, of a hopeful joy, is critically necessary. And in these thoughts of joy, I wonder if for me – and maybe for you – there is a reversal of that framing. Through joy, we find purpose.
That framing is something that has been growing for me as I’ve thought about purpose not through the lens of a thing we are called to achieve, but purpose as a way we decide to be. I have, as I have grown personally and professionally, tried to make conscious decisions about how to live. It’s something for me that is informed by my personal history as a third culture kid, growing up where I have always been a guest, through the arts and creative process, and by the work of being an addict in recovery. These frames require a certain level of comfort with being uncomfortable, which is the mantra these days around how we bridge cultures and grow. These frames involve being observant, tactical, improvisatory, politic, and flexible. Most of all, they make you open to the possibility of being wrong about something – or at least acknowledging that your view or opinion may very well be incomplete, and so there is work to do to complete the vision.
My purpose, then, is to be joyful, and to be open to uncertainty, and to creatively bridge those gaps. As with any purpose, the path is imperfect and there is work to do. My purpose, and the way I get there, is certainly also not proscriptive – as a child you have little control over where your parents raise you, and if you aren’t an addict, I don’t recommend trying it. If you are an addict, try recovery, and I am here for you.
But that sense of joy, or purpose through discovery, is something that I circle back to, and over this whirlwind trip, was highlighted in two specific instances. On Thursday, I delivered a keynote welcome to the Colorado Creative Industries Summit. Colorado has a unique system of support for arts districts, through a program housed in its state tourism agency. Downtowns and neighborhoods can receive specific Creative District designation, opening grant dollars, technical assistance, and marketing support for their work. This has created a robust network of creative enterprises and dedicated problem-solvers supporting each other. I was honored to share Springboard’s Creative People Power report with them, which takes the wide variety of Springboard programming, our work and ambitions for creative community development, and puts it into a frame of asset-based, relationship-powered, equity-driven work. I shared a quote from Erik Takeshita, a former Springboard board chair, that goes to purpose-as-way-of-being. “Tight on the mission, loose on the method,” he liked to say, and that has enabled my organization to develop responsive, relevant programming, and to push us forward. To see that resonate with people who I know to be passionate peers, that was a joy.
On Friday, before heading to my friend’s wedding, she was kind enough to arrange a preview of the new David Hammons show at Houser & Wirth, where she works. Hammons is by far and away one of my favorite artists, a joker on a grand scale, a raconteur of everyday objects, a profound thinker about race and class in America. He is famous for his Bliz-aard Ball Sale, a performance where he hustled multi-sized snowballs on the streets of New York in 1983, attaching electric fans to a boulder to make a “rock fan”, sculptures made of discarded bottles of Night Train fortified wine, just a few examples from a decades-long career of incisive work. At Hauser, the show includes a vast field of pop-up tents, referencing our growing homelessness crisis, with the spray-painted sign “this could be u”. Also, a shrine for Black Lives Matter, an enormous red balloon in a blue room with a tiny Sojourner Mars lander robot coming over the crest, a constellation of stains on a doormat. Everywhere is observation, play, and profundity on a grand scale. The work is purposeful because it is joyful, because it treats people with love, even if those people are in pain.
That’s the thing. It is often easier to love people in the abstract, or as a whole, than the individual in front of you, or even yourself as an individual. It can be hard to know your purpose, or to figure out what to do next. Building relationships takes time and is difficult, and what got us here is not going to be what gets us to a more just and equitable world. If you have a singular purpose you are called to, great. If you don’t find the things that bring you joy, and cultivate your purpose through that. Joy matters. Joy attracts, consoles, and leads. Joy does the work. Go get your joy.