Work Is Living Art
đź“š Creativity
“All life is work, all work is art, and there is no artist.”
— Boysenberry Payne
From the moment the body takes it's first breath to the last flicker of consciousness, life is work—not merely in the sense of jobs or tasks, but as the uninterrupted labor of being alive. The human body and mind are in constant motion, always processing, adjusting, adapting. Even rest is not rest—it is repair, recalibration, and response.
The Body: A Symphony of Unseen Labor
Even in stillness, the body performs miracles. Trillions of chemical reactions occur every second[^1]. The autonomic nervous system orchestrates breath, heartbeat, digestion, temperature, and hormone balance—without our permission or awareness[^2]. Standing, sleeping, healing, breathing—all are labor-intensive processes executed by living cells in harmonious complexity.
The self do not “make” the body breathe; the body breathes with or without conscious awareness.
The Mind: An Engine of Meaning
The brain, a mere 2% of body mass, consumes 20% of the body's energy[^3]. Even while asleep, it processes sensory data, rehearses social interactions, recalls memories, and reshapes identity[^4]. This stream of mental activity—the thoughts, moods, narratives—is ceaseless. What seems like “stillness” in meditation is often the hardest work the mind does: letting go.
What is called “self” is often a post-script—narration trailing behind unconscious decision.
Every Act is Irreproducible
Nothing in this universe happens twice in exactly the same way. Each action, like each snowflake, is singular. No breath is repeated, no gesture recycled. Every act is a brushstroke on the canvas of time—unrepeatable and unowned[^5]. This is not poetic metaphor; it is quantum and thermodynamic fact.
Creation Is Not Optional
Stars ignite, explode, and die to create the elements that form our cells[^6]. The gravity that crushed hydrogen into helium also carved the atoms in the body's bones. These bodies are made from supernovae, written in stardust, moved by entropy, and shaped by invisible forces that create complexity moment by moment[^7].
Destruction is not failure; it is part of the masterpiece.
Entropy dismantles, rearranges, and invites novelty[^8]. Forests regrow, ecosystems rewire, and minds evolve because things fall apart. Even thoughts—those precious jewels of “I”—are often recycled fragments of language, upbringing, and ancestral DNA[^12][^13].
Life is Work, With No Worker
Scientific analysis reveals that the human body is only partially human: it contains more microbial cells than human cells[^9]. And those microbes carry over 100x the genetic information of the human genome[^10][^11]. The body is a walking ecosystem. And that ecosystem—just like the cosmos—is not you or yours. There is no you—or you are all—looking from an infinite number of finite perspectives.
Cognitive science adds to this humbling picture. Most of what is thought is generated by unconscious systems, shaped by culture, memory, and early childhood plasticity[^14][^15][^16]. There is no author of a "self", but rather a tabula rasa on which the universe writes—over and over.
🌌 Conclusion: Life is Work. Work is Art. We Are Not the Artist.
There is no fixed “self” directing this cosmic choreography. There is only a moment-by-moment arising of action—organic, unpredictable, never twice the same. Life does not merely involve work.
Life is work. And all work, when seen clearly, is art.
References
[^1]: Alberts, B., et al. (2015). Molecular Biology of the Cell (6th ed.). Garland Science.
[^2]: Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. W. W. Norton.
[^3]: Raichle, M. E., & Gusnard, D. A. (2002). Appraising the brain's energy budget. Trends in Neurosciences, 25(10), 493–494. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0166-2236(02)02233-3
[^4]: Buckner, R. L., Andrews-Hanna, J. R., & Schacter, D. L. (2008). The brain’s default network: Anatomy, function, and relevance to disease. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1124(1), 1–38. https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1440.011
[^5]: Rovelli, C. (2021). Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution. Riverhead Books.
[^6]: Chaisson, E. (2006). Epic of Evolution: Seven Ages of the Cosmos. Columbia University Press.
[^7]: Greene, B. (2004). The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality. Vintage.
[^8]: Prigogine, I., & Stengers, I. (1984). Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature. Bantam Books.
[^9]: Sender, R., Fuchs, S., & Milo, R. (2016). Revised Estimates for the Number of Human and Bacteria Cells in the Body. Cell, 164(3), 337–340. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2016.01.020
[^10]: The Human Microbiome Project Consortium. (2012). Structure, function and diversity of the healthy human microbiome. Nature, 486(7402), 207–214. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11234
[^11]: Lynch, S. V., & Pedersen, O. (2016). The Human Intestinal Microbiome in Health and Disease. New England Journal of Medicine, 375(24), 2369–2379. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMra1600266
[^12]: Tomasello, M. (2009). The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Harvard University Press.
[^13]: Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Harvard University Press.
[^14]: Gopnik, A., Meltzoff, A. N., & Kuhl, P. K. (1999). The Scientist in the Crib: Minds, Brains, and How Children Learn. Harper Perennial.
[^15]: Libet, B. (1985). Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 8(4), 529–566. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00044903
[^16]: Wegner, D. M. (2002). The Illusion of Conscious Will. MIT Press.