Hungry about life – 200 words project

Here is this week’s 200 words project:

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**_“To feed your Muse, then, you should always have been hungry about life since you were a child. If not, it is a little late to start. Better late than never, of course. Do you feel up to it?

It means you must take long walks at night around your city or town, or walks in the country by day. And long walks any time, through bookstores and libraries.”_**

– Ray Bradbury in**Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity**

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On the question of how to live life, how to inspire creativity, Ray suggests this – that hunger of life is essential.

I wondered what Ray means by being hungry about life. And I decided that it means someone who wants to experience life – and in this digital age – the real life as well as the digital life. One who wants to explore all the senses. One who wants to sit around looking at people, just because one can. Someone who will just sit in a park, just because. And go window shopping. And explore that mountain. Someone who doesn’t mind getting wet or damp or a little uncomfortable. Someone who looks at people around behaving and instead of anger at why the world isn’t the way she wants it to be, is curious and amused by the way the people behave. Someone with an empathy for the human condition and all its silliness.

The question for me then, is how do I become such a person, who is hungry about life. Ray’s prescription on how to be hungry- the minute I read his words – bring up all these excuses of “Oh, I don’t have any time. Who does that anyway?”

And so I know his prescription is spot on. His suggestion to just walk along everywhere everyday, looking, combined with my own definition of what the hunger for life means to me, should help care for my muse.

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About the 200 Words Project

Once every week, on Monday morning, I will post my ‘200 Words Project’ post where I will ruminate on some idea which caught my interest in the current book I’m reading, or maybe (sometimes) from a blog post or podcast – in 200 words or more, never less!