"No", a portal to more...

On the way to yes

100 rejections

This week, I met a young creative woman who was challenging herself to get 100 rejections in 2024, with the underlying goal to get a few accepted projects in the mix, and to slowly burn away the pain of the rejections through exposure. This is not the first time I hear about this challenge, nor that it catches my ear, but it’s the first time I see the beauty and excitement one can find in the “No” - not as a signpost on the way to a “Yes”, but receiving it as a gift, joy in and of itself.

What if “nos” could be the pathway to a destined yes, but also joyful pebbles to play with along the route? What if a “no” was not a negative response to an action or a decision, but simply an experience? What if “nos”, detours, wrong paths and dead ends were part of the manifestation, the destination, the patient path? To occupy our minds, to keep us patient through action, to let us explores the polarities of life, to fulfil our desires and dreams through patience and rejections?

Desire and manifestation

Desire comes from the Latin word desiderare, which means “away from the stars”. “Every desire implies a distance, an absence, a lack of satisfaction. That longing, that empty space, is where the volcanic potential of the optative genoito resides”, writes Jhumpa Lahiri in Translating Others and Myself. Genoito as in “may happen, may be”. There is no realisation, manifestation, “yes”, without desire, without a void, an empty space, a momentary or redirecting “no”.

And then I wonder, could the “no”, be as joyful, pleasureful, fun, lively, fulfilling as a “yes”? Could it simply be neutral? Could we turn it into a positive through the lens of perception?

This fall and winter, I find myself (as mentioned in my previous letter The Artist Journey: The Underworld) applying to more grants, residencies, jobs, publishing contracts and opportunities as I ever have before, and I have a calendar of other opportunities to apply to throughout the year. I have received my first few rejections, and I anticipate more to come. It is all because I take my writing more seriously, or rather, that I don’t let rejections, or the potentiality of them block the path I chose to walk. Today, after a few years of trying and avoiding the path, I can let myself apply and receive “nos”, and maybe one day “yeses”.

As I list the rejections I have already received in January, not aiming for 100, but grateful for each and everyone of them, I smile and laugh. I have applied to a job at a Donkey Sanctuary, one on a film set, to a very corporate one, to freelance gigs; I envisioned an artistic collaboration at a residency too, which opened new ideas in me. They are all potentialities, they all opened doors and getaways in me, teaching me, letting me have fun throughout the application process, gathering new ideas, energies, pieces of information.

No as an adventure, a portal to more

A “yes” is a portal to an experience, an hopefully beautiful adventure. A “no”, is an experience in itself, has already been an adventure, in the playful field of potentials and in the transformation of yourself through the application process. A “no” is a portal to more, if only you let it.

Chelsey Jo Huntsman and Oren Harris talked recently about conflicts in relationships being portals for more love to come in. And what if a “no” was also a portal to more too? More knowledge about your path, more learning, more energy, more ideas, more love for yourself and the world, more joy, more play, more experience…

A world with only constant “yes” and open doors doesn’t exist, nor could satisfy you as a soul and a human being. I’ve always been struck about this teaching (apologies for not recalling the source): would you be ok only being able to experience the “positive” experiences, such as joy, love, pleasure, fun, excitement when world and personal circumstances call for sorrow and despair, in the grief of the loss of a loved one for example?

So what if we made “nos” neutral and imagined perceiving them as positive too, as a human experience, as a portal calling more of yourself and your art, calling forth more depth of emotions and power, more of your capacity to hold a full spectrum of experience? How would you be able to hold successes, big and small, if you collapsed or turned back at the sight of failure? Learning to receive the “nos” in depth of emotions and truth will build you to receive the “yeses” in the future.

Next month, I’m wishing, hoping, desiring “yeses”, and I know, I trust there will be more “nos” along the way. And that there aren’t here to unsettle or unravel me. I’ll do my best to take them as a playful game, to learn and experience what I need and want to through them, to receive them as gift and play. I’ll write more applications too. I’ll play the game, and have fun along the way to the yes that is inevitably awaiting, somewhere along the road. I’ll rejoice in the “nos” an the “yeses”.

What “nos” have you been avoiding recently? How could you make their potential and existence more joyful? How could you learn to receive the “yeses” and “nos” of your life on the way to the yes you desire? What if you made it all a playful game? What if simply it was a way to keep you busy, to have fun, to play the game of life, to receive all experiences, on the path to your truest dream and desire?

Will you come and play with us?

With much love,
Lucie