On creative commitment and reaching the lighthouse
How might we re-envision the achievement of creative goals?
The final pages of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse are preoccupied with an ending—specifically, the final throes of a creative process.
Lily Briscoe, an artist and a guest of the Ramsay family at their holiday home in the Hebrides, makes the final mark on a canvas that has taken her a decade to finish. During this time—between the opening and the ending of the novel—there are changes and bereavements, including the deaths of two of the Ramsay children and their mother. Yet, each summer, the remaining family and their friends return. Each summer, the youngest son, James, agitates to be taken on a boat trip to a nearby lighthouse. Each summer, his father defers—until the last pages of the novel, in which we see Lily complete her painting just as the Ramsays reach the lighthouse.
There’s something important here about the beginnings and endings of things: journeys, destinations; the loop of creativity—circularity; embarking and returning.
For me, To the Lighthouse is an exploration of the endeavour of attaining creative goals. Lily’s final internal monologue reveals a commitment to artistic process and the enormous effort that is sometimes required to complete it:
There it was – her picture. Yes, with all of its green and blues, its lines running up and across, its attempt at something. It would be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be destroyed. But what did that matter? she asked herself, taking up her brush again. She looked at the steps; they were empty; she looked at her canvas; it was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.
Significantly, the intuitive vision Lily has held for her painting for over a decade is fully realised only in its completion. For others, like James in his desire to reach the lighthouse, the vision is held close—consistent and persistent—for years; an aspiration that colours our lives. The lighthouse is a point of reference, a landmark; like a lodestone, it draws us towards.
I find this metaphor of the lighthouse very alive, as does Ryder Carroll, who uses it in this beautiful piece about how to approach, and hold, our goals:
Think of goals as lighthouses. Lighthouses serve as guides. They illuminate safe passage for ships at sea, preventing them from breaking apart on the same jagged cliffs on which they’re often built. They themselves are not destinations.
Carroll is deeply invested in the concept of creative process, which always involves a degree of reflection: an element of looking back as well as forward. He is the inventor of the system known as the bullet journal, which is concerned not just with productivity and achieving goals but with developing our capacity to reflect, take stock and consider how we grow and learn through this process. To create anything—a painting, a trip to a lighthouse, a life—we need to see where we’ve come from so we can ascertain where we’re going.
Lighthouses serve as guides. They themselves are not destinations.
Perhaps, in Woolf’s novel, Mr Ramsay understands this concept of the journey, the process, whereas James does not. By the time they reach the lighthouse, James has matured from a small boy into a young man, and has developed the strength, agency and capacity to sail the boat himself.
How might we make more space for the experience of the journey, rather than being fixated on the destination?
What if we could hold our creative goals in this more flexible way, allowing space for maturation and the circularity of process?
And then, where do we find our sense of purpose and direction (without which there’s a risk that the boat we’re in will just spin around in circles)?
One answer, for me, lies in the concept of commitment.
Before embarking on a creative endeavour, we need to choose what we’re committing to. More than that, we need to understand why we want to create it, and let that why be the lighthouse that guides us. This commitment—with all its intrinsic effort, integrity and, sometimes, sacrifice—is crucial. We’re setting sail in a specific direction. Commitment gives us a clarity of purpose. We can’t know where we’ll end up by the end of the process but the commitment can be our map and guide, our navigation system, our true north.
Without commitment, a goal or a possible creative project is just a good idea.
With commitment, we always have a compass point when we need to course correct. Guided by the beam of the lighthouse, the world is illuminated. And, we’re more in touch with that beautiful illumination within: our capacity to tether to something greater than ourselves; to be a beacon to others for what we stand for.
If, or when, we reach the lighthouse, we gain access to a whole new perspective. We can throw open the door and climb the winding stairs to the top. We can marvel at the building’s architecture, the rounded shape of the rooms; at the 360 degree view of the landscape. We can turn on the spot and see, through the windows all around, the earth, the sea, the sky.
We can see where we’ve come from and reflect on what got us here. Commitment; the intensity of our promise to ourselves. It may be, like Lily Briscoe, that we have found it exhausting. But this commitment is the fuel for future journeys, the foundation for our future visions. It sheds light on uncertain terrain—the shoreline, the dangerous rocks—so we can see where we’ve still yet to go.
Love, Rachel
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