I feel better today. Spiritually. Psychically. I attribute this to watching “American Symphony” with the incredible Jon Batiste. What he and his wife, Suleika Jaouad, share in this documentary is encapsulated by the line, “Survival is a creative act.”

I’m going to write that on post-it-notes and big banners and stick them all around my home because I have a lot to survive in 2024. I was not feeling good about it. Not too much optimism. And then this phrase pops up in my life exactly when I need it.

Batiste talks about how art finds its way to us when we need it in his speech at the Grammy Awards for best album in 2022. It’s magic. (As is the incredible coat he is wearing.) Sean Thomas Dougherty writes something like this in his poem, “Why Bother?” from his book The Second O of Sorrow. Why bother writing? “Because right now there is someone out there with a wound in the exact shape of your words.”

Survival is a creative act. I looked the phrase up. Ocean Vuong said it in an interview with the CBC. I didn’t look any further. The funny thing is, I’m pretty sure I read that interview before, but the phrase didn’t stick then like it does now. Now is when I need it. And like magic, it found its way to me again.

For a lot of my life, surviving was something I did “on the side.” Then I would rejoin my life in progress. Whatever difficult thing was happening always felt like an interruption. Now I realize it is the main event. It feels good to bring it front and centre. Jon Kabat-Zinn talks about this in his book Full Catastrophe Living. Life is the full catastrophe. Every day. I first read this book when I was about thirty. So I’ve known this for a long time. But it is with me now on a deeper level.

American Symphony mentions Suleika Jaouad’s bestselling book, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted. Both Batiste and Jaouad are at peaks of creative success when Jaouad has a relapse of the leukemia she describes in her book. What strikes me is the subtitle of her book and the idea of “interruption.” To be clear, I have not read this book, although by all accounts it is excellent. (I don’t read cancer narratives anymore. They bring back too many bad memories.) But this idea that our lives are “interrupted” by illness and other problems we have to solve is one I reject now. Maybe Jaouad does too, but again, I haven’t read her book. If you’ve read it, let me know.

Survival is not a side-hustle. It’s not something we do until we can rejoin our regular life in progress. Our life is whatever is happening. Cancer. Failing hearts. The deaths of our parents, our friends, our dogs. Divorces. Floods and fires. War. Genocide (as victim or witness). A global pandemic. Climate catastrophe. And through it all, our survival is a creative act. It is our life’s work. And to survive while acting with grace and the golden rule at top of mind is a life well lived. This is something I know to be true.

For those following my heart story, I still don’t have a date for the big surgery, but I have reason to believe it will happen before the end of March. I’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile, whatever you are surviving at this very moment, it is a creative act. Honour it.