This story has been staying in my head rent-free for a few days. Something tells me I should share it when it is lurking inside my prefrontal cortex like now.
A lesson on impetus should be shared when there is impetus to share it, now!
I came across a social media post by a certain Professor Kristy Chu who is a pretty well-known artist/professor in a Taiwanese university.
She posted something to retell a story of hers: while on a cab in New York twenty years ago, she noticed something exceptional worn by a person on the street, she got off, searched for it across several streets, finding the man and offering to buy that mashup costume made out of materials from piles of garbage on the street. Presumably, the man was a homeless artist.
You can check out the post and the costume here: https://lnkd.in/d53nUD9f
The homeless man artists didn't want to sell it initially. She succeeded in convincing him to sell it to her eventually. She don it on there and then despite the smell! She is a true artist herself, indeed!
She still keeps the costume with her in Taipei till today. She ended that post emphasizing the importance of 'going for it when the moment comes'. If there is a moment of over-thinking, that moment is over and opportunity would be lost.
Hmm...
After she made the social media post recently, the artist, identified as Mr Wendelle Headley (whose Instagram handle is wendelle.headley, in case you are interested to follow him) wrote back to her with something very beautiful about their two decade long connections, which was featured in a subsequent post: https://lnkd.in/di8ihrj8
Part of it reads: "... The way you saw me, the way you put my steps into words, it feels like you stitched another thread into the fabric I've been weaving all these years..."
Ain't that beautiful? Many readers commended on Wendelle's style of writing. What an artist Wendelle is, even with words. My daughter thinks it is beautifully written too!
I learned something very valuable through my own experience of this entire story.
That of finesse from the core of an individual. Something AI can never produce.
I pray that I still have the impetus to retell this story to my students on the first week of semester to emphasize the importance of not using AI to complete their assignments! We all need to develop some instinct and finesse for our crafts. Or, perhaps I should make them read this.
