To risk or not: Inspiration from Anish Kapoor

If you’re creative or want to be creative or want to understand more about how creative people think, I encourage you to watch the SundayMorning interview on cbs.com with the sculptor Anish Kapoor. If you watched the Olympics, you probably saw his sculpture, Orbit – huge, red, and towering 35 stories above Olympics plaza. I saw him on Sunday Morning yesterday and was struck by this particular piece of the interview:

“I think one has a duty to continue to experiment, to say I truly do not know what I’m doing, but I’m going to take not knowing seriously and risk whatever it is that needs to be risked. And allow a process to emerge, a thing to emerge out of a process, that may be quite mad. What’s wrong with that though?”

What I especially like about what Kapoor said is that it can be applied not just to art, but to life. To risk something and fail or end up looking like a crazy person – as Kapoor said, What’s wrong with that? I’d rather try and fail then reach the end of my life regretting that I didn’t do something I always wanted to do, that I didn’t even try. What do you want to do? What do you want to risk? What’s worth any risk to you? It may be your art, your relationship, your work. Maybe you’ve wanted to move to a different part of the country, or the world, but it seemed like too big a change to undertake. Let Kapoor be your inspiration. He built a sculpture 35 STORIES high! And Orbit's just one of his many quirky sculptures. Whatever you’ve been afraid of, confront it now. Then make the decision: Will you risk whatever needs to be risked?