Genius as Gift. In the 1979 classic, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, author Lewis Hyde recognizes the ancient idea that one’s genius is a gift and only in relating to it in this way is it possible to access it. In contrast to a gift, Hyde describes the contemporary practice of treating genius as a commodity. As a commodity solely attributed to the will, one’s genius loses its potential to animate and sustain life. Genius becomes property. Hyde comments on the current cult of genius. “The public adoration of genius turns men and women into celebrities and cuts off all commerce with the guardian spirits.” Instead of service and gratitude, indicative responses to a gift, one’s genius is traded on for personal gain. It is important to consider that both commodities and gifts are essential parts of society, however, gifts are of the old economy and have to do with soul.
Observed in everyday life, the difference between these two approaches to genius may appear subtle, but they render vastly different results. Hyde observes that genius as commodity becomes a parasitic narcissism–a current cultural phenomenon. Genius engaged as gift results in unique, sustainable, soulful living. When one sacrifices or is in service to their inherent genius they become more like the gift–genius– instead of altering it to match their ego–preconceived identity. And, in the final stage of transformation the gift is passed on to others, keeping it potent and in motion.
Work and Labor. Hyde suggests that one’s genius comes into the world not through work, but through labor. These can be difficult terms to untangle. Hyde imagines work as intentional, within the control of the self. In contrast to work, he posits, “A labor can be intended but only to the extent of doing the groundwork, or of not doing things that would clearly prevent the labor. Beyond that labor has its own schedule.” When laboring one has the sense that they were present but somehow the work was not entirely of their doing. Something was at work within them. Perhaps another way of saying this is that labor asks that one be in relationship to the inner world. Labor becomes the essential creative act, an intersection of what one can control and cannot. It is a bit of a dream state, a dialogue or conversation and an acknowledgement and naming of the gift.
Regardless, recognizing this slight, subatomic variation in perception holds potential for a magnificent chain reaction. No longer does work carry the burden of sustaining one’s sense of self. As the poet Mary Oliver penned it:
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Self worth is no longer founded on work or performance, but on a willingness to be in relationship. Work–an essential task–can become very simple and nourishing, perhaps sacramental. Its seems that contemporary culture is experiencing a crisis regarding their relationship to work. Perhaps we have been expecting something from work that it simply cannot produce. Conceiving genius as gift and the offspring of labor and not work re-appropriates the ego or self, putting it in service of or in relationship to mystery. The current conventional practice of genius seen as commodity–the product solely of our efforts, produces an experience of work that is ever diminishing, fearful, often resulting in disaster.
Welcomed Relief. I don’t have to make it happen–genius. It’s already there. I don’t have to perform. I only have the opportunity to witness and experience gratitude. And, in this form of service I am grounded to daily life while also coming into contact with something beyond me. In the original sense of the word religion, I become linked to the spiritual dimension, through an everyday practice. I have long carried the cultural burden that I must constantly produce genius through my work. I experience a sigh of relief and a kind of homecoming while revelling in the idea of labor. No longer must I toil in biblical agony, feeling diminished at every turn. As author, psychologist Donald Kalsched put it, one trades purgatorial agony for genuine suffering. It is a shedding of old ideas and a surrendering to new possibilities. My guess is that this is the real work, the appropriate work, the groundwork of genius.
