When we say we are afraid to begin a project, we are actually saying something else: "I am afraid of how I will feel as I continue." We do not want to start because we do not know that we can continue. It is not the start, it is the finish that troubles us.

Wanting to know where we are going is often how we fail to go anywhere at all. Rather than surrender to the mystery of the creative journey, we want to know each sight we will see, each obstacle we will confront. Each "something" that we will encounter if we dare to begin.

The truth is that we cannot know where our creative trail is taking us. We cannot predict precisely who and what it is we will become. The only certainty is that we will change from who and what we are. We will become something larger and something more, but exactly the form that something more and larger will take is a creation that we have not yet created and cannot demand to know.

The openness to begin is all the openness we are required to have.

from "The Sound of Paper"