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Artists Do Not Run Away From Non-being, But By Encountering And Wrestling With It, Force It To Produce Being.
-Rollo May
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Artists Do Not Run

Rollo May
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Artists Do Not Run Away From Non-being, But By Encountering And Wrestling With It, Force It To Produce Being.

Understanding the Quote: "artists do not run away from non-being, but by encountering and wrestling..."

This quote by Rollo May reflects deeply on the theme of running. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Running, Wrestling, Artist, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Rollo May interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Rollo May

Rollo May is celebrated for insightful thoughts on running and wrestling. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Running
Wrestling
Artist
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It Is Necessary For The Birthing Process To Begin To Move In Its Own Organic Time. It Is Necessary That The Artist Have This Sense Of Timing, That He Or She Respect... Periods Of Receptivity As Part Of The Mystery Of Creativity And Creation.
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Ironic
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Healing
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Protest
Remains
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Boredom
Anxiety
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Artist
Listening
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Good Life
Survival
Something Is Born, Comes Into Being, Something That Did Not Exist Before - Which Is As Good A Definition Of Creativity As We Can Get.
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Definitions
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Giving
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Society
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We Define Religion As The Assumption That Life Has Meaning. Religion, Or Lack Of It, Is Shown Not In Some Intellectual Or Verbal Formulations But In One's Total Orientation To Life. Religion Is Whatever The Individual Takes To Be His Ultimate Concern. One's Religious Attitude Is To Be Found At That Point Where He Has A Conviction That There Are Values In Human Existence Worth Living And Dying For.
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Attitude
Intellectual
Joy Is The Zest That You Get Out Of Using Your Talents, Your Understanding, The Totality Of Your Being, For Great Aims...that's The Kind Of Feeling That Goes With Creativity. That's Why I Say The Courage To Create. Creation Does Not Come Out Of Simply What You're Born With. That Must Be United With Your Courage, Both Of Which Cause Anxiety, But Also Great Joy.
Courage
Creativity
Using Your Talents
Now, I Believe In Life, And I Believe In The Joy Of Human Existence, But These Things Cannot Be Experienced Except As We Also Face The Despair, Also Face The Anxiety That Every Human Being Has To Face If He Lives With Any Creativity At All.
Believe
Creativity
Joy
Forge In The Smithy Of Your Soul.
Soul
Your Soul
In Any Age Courage Is The Simple Virtue Needed For A Human Being To Traverse The Rocky Road From Infancy To Maturity Of Personality. But In An Age Of Anxiety, An Age Of Herd Morality And Personal Isolation, Courage Is A Sine Qua Non. In Periods When The Mores Of The Society Were More Consistent Guides, The Individual Was More Firmly Cushioned In His Crises Of Development; But In Times Of Transition Like Ours, The Individual Is Thrown On His Own At An Earlier Age And For A Longer Period.
Courage
Maturity
Simple
Creativity Is The Process Of Bringing Something New Into Being. Creativity Requires Passion And Commitment. It Brings To Our Awareness What Was Previously Hidden And Points To New Life. The Experience Is One Of Heightened Consciousness: Ecstasy.
Passion
Creativity
Commitment
Courage Is Required Not Only In A Person's Occasional Crucial Decision For His Own Freedom, But In The Little Hour-to-hour Decisions Which Place The Bricks In The Structure Of His Building Of Himself Into A Person Who Acts With Freedom And Responsibility.
Courage
Responsibility
Decision
It Is Highly Significant And Indeed Almost A Rule, That Moral Courage Has Its Source In Such Identification Through One's Own Sensitivity With Suffering Of One's Fellow Human Beings." (p. 16-17)
Suffering
Moral
Significant
Suffering Is Nature's Way Of Indicating A Mistaken Attitude Or Way Of Behavior, And To The Nonegocentric Person Every Moment Of Suffering Is The Opportunity For Growth. People Should Rejoice In Suffering, Strange As It Sounds, For This Is A Sign Of The Availability Of Energy To Transform Their Characters.
Attitude
Character
Opportunity
One Longs For The Presence Of A Leader Like Lincoln, Who Openly Admitted His Doubts And As Openly Preserved His Commitment.
Leadership
Commitment
Leader
When One Read's Kierkegaard's Profound Analyses Of Anxiety And Despair Or Nietzsche's Amazingly Acute Insights Into The Dynamics Of Resentment And The Guilt And Hostility Which Accompany Repressed Emotional Powers, One Might Pinch Oneself To Realize That One Is Reading Works Written In The Last Century And Not Some New Contemporary Psychological Analysis.
Reading
Emotional
Profound
Creativity Occurs In An Act Of Encounter And Is To Be Understood With This Encounter As Its Center.
Creativity
Encounters
Understood
The Opposite Of Courage In Our Society Is Not Cowardice, It Is Conformity.
Courage
Soulmate
Self Esteem
A Dynamic Struggle Goes On Within A Person Between What He Or She Consciously Thinks On The One Hand And, On The Other, Some Insight, Some Perspective That Is Struggling To Be Born.
Struggle
Thinking
Hands
There Is Nobody Who Totally Lacks The Courage To Change.
Change
Courage To Change
Artists Love To Immerse Themselves In Chaos In Order To Put It Into Form, Just As God Created Form Out Of Chaos In Genesis. Forever Unsatisfied With The Mundane, The Apathetic, The Conventional, They Always Push On To Newer Worlds.
Artist
Order
Forever
We Cannot Will To Have Insights. We Cannot Will To Have Creativity, But We Can Will To Give Ourselves To The Creative Experience With Intensity Of Dedication And Commitment.
Commitment
Creativity
Dedication
The Essence Of Being Human Is That, In The Brief Moment We Exist On This Spinning Planet, We Can Love Some Persons And Some Things, In Spite Of The Fact That Time And Death Will Ultimately Claim Us All.
Essence
Spinning
Facts
Everyone Has A Need For Significance; And If We Can't Make That Possible, Or Even Probable, In Our Society, Then It Will Be Obtained In Destructive Ways.
Way
Needs
Our Society
Intimacy Requires Courage Because Risk Is Inescapable. We Cannot Know At The Outset How The Relationship Will Affect Us.
Risk
Intimacy
Self Actualization
Those We Call Saints Rebelled Against An Outmoded And Inadequate Form Of God On The Basis Of Their New Insights Into Divinity.
Saint
Divinity
Form
Generally, The Shaking Is Consciously Felt In Its Positive Aspects — As The Wonderful New Heaven And Earth Which Love With Its Miracle And Mystery Has Suddenly Produced. Love Is The Answer, We Sing. Our Western Culture Seems To Be Engaged In A Romantic - Albeit Desperate - Conspiracy To Enforce The Illusion That That Is All There Is To Eros.
Life
Falling In Love
Love Is
Human Freedom Involves Our Capacity To Pause, To Choose The One Response Toward Which We Wish To Throw Our Weight.
Wish
Weight
Capacity
Humans Have A Habit Of Running Faster When They Have Lost Their Way.
Running
Way
Habit
Humor Is The Healthy Way Of Feeling "distance" Between One's Self And The Problem, A Way Of Standing Off And Looking At One's Problem With Perspective.
Distance
Self
Perspective
What If Imagination And Art Are Not Frosting At All, But The Fountainhead Of Human Experience?
Art
Imagination
What If
Courage Is The Capacity To Meet The Anxiety Which Arises As One Achieves Freedom. It Is The Willingness To Differentiate, To Move From The Protecting Realms Of Parental Dependence To New Levels Of Freedom And Integration.
Courage
Moving
Anxiety
Mass Communication--wonder As It May Be Technologically And Something To Be Appreciated And Valued--presents Us Wit A Serious Daner, The Danger Of Conformism, Due To The Fact That We All View The Same Things At The Same Time In All The Cities Of The Country. (p. 73)
Country
Communication
Views
Therapy Isn't Curing Somebody Of Something; It Is A Means Of Helping A Person Explore Himself, His Life, His Consciousness. My Purpose As A Therapist Is To Find Out What It Means To Be Human. Every Human Being Must Have A Point At Which He Stands Against The Culture, Where He Says, "this Is Me And The World Be Damned!" Leaders Have Always Been The Ones To Stand Against The Society - Socrates, Christ, Freud, All The Way Down The Line.
Mean
Leader
Lines
Creativity Is Neither The Product Of Neurosis Nor Simple Talent, But An Intense Courageous Encounter With The Gods.
Courage
Creativity
Simple
In My Clinical Experience, The Greatest Block To A Person's Development Is His Having To Take On A Way Of Life Which Is Not Rooted In His Own Powers.
Block
Destiny
Development
Every Human Being Must Have A Point At Which He Stands Against The Culture, Where He Says, This Is Me And The Damned World Can Go To Hell.
Culture
World
Hell
Science, Nietzsche Had Warned, Is Becoming A Factory, And The Result Will Be Ethical Nihilism.
Nihilism
Becoming
Existential
It Is Infinitely Safer To Know That The Man At The Top Has His Doubts, As You And I Have Ours, Yet Has The Courage To Move Ahead In Spite Of These Doubts.
Moving
Men
Doubt
This Is Hard For Parents To Say Genuinely.
Parent
Hard
People Only Change When It Becomes Too Dangerous To Stay The Way They Are.
People
Way
Dangerous
Heroes Are Necessary In Order To Enable The Citizens To Find Their Own Ideals, Courage And Wisdom In The Society. The Hero Carries Our Hopes, Our Aspirations, Our Ideals, Our Beliefs. In The Deepest Sense The Hero Is Created By Us; He Or She Is Born Collectively As Our Own Myth. This Is What Makes Heroism So Important: It Reflects Our Own Sense Of Identity And From This Our Own Heroism Is Molded.
Inspiring
Hero
Order
Purpose In The Human Being Is A Much More Complex Phenomenon Than What Used To Be Called Will Power.
Purpose
Used
Will Power
Artistic Symbols And Myths Speak Out Of The Primordial, Preconscious Realm Of The Mind Which Is Powerful And Chaotic. Both Symbol And Myth Are Ways Of Bringing Order And Form Into This Chaos.
Powerful
Speaks Out
Order
Courage Is Necessary To Make Being And Becoming Possible.
Becoming
Intimacy Requires Courage Because Risk Is Inescapable.
Risk
Intimacy
Self Actualization
Indeed, Compulsive And Rigid Moralism Arises In Given Persons Precisely As The Result Of A Lack Of Sense Of Being. Rigid Moralism Is A Compensatory Mechanism By Which The Individual Persuades Himself To Take Over The External Sanctions Because He Has No Fundamental Assurance That His Own Choices Have Any Sanction Of Their Own
Choices
Fundamentals
Existentialism
Beauty Is The Experience That Gives Us A Sense Of Joy And A Sense Of Peace Simultaneously.
Beauty
Peace
Giving
I Became A Psychotherapist Because That's Where People Will Unburden Themselves, Where They Will Show What Is In Their Hearts.
Heart
People
Shows
Freedom Does Not Come Automatically; It Is Achieved. And It Is Not Gained In A Single Bound; It Must Be Achieved Each Day.
Doe
Each Day
Bounds
The Hallmark Of Courage In Our Age Of Conformity Is The Capacity To Stand On One's Own Convictions - Not Obstinately Or Defiantly
Courage
Conformity
Hallmark
Apathy Adds Up, In The Long Run, To Cowardice.
Running
Long
Apathy
A Myth Is A Way Of Making Sense In A Senseless World. Myths Are Narrative Patterns That Give Significance To Our Existence.
Giving
World
Patterns
The Creative Process Must Be Explored... As The Expression Of The Normal People In The Act Of Actualizing Themselves.
Creativity
Expression
People
What Anxiety Means Is It's As Though The World Is Knocking At Your Door, And You Need To Create, You Need To Make Something, You Need To Do Something. I Think Anxiety, For People Who Have Found Their Own Heart And Their Own Souls, For Them It Is A Stimulus Toward Creativity, Toward Courage. It's What Makes Us Human Beings.
Courage
Heart
Creativity
I Learned That Healing And Cure Are Active Processes In Which I Myself Needed To Participate.
Healing
Process
Cures
Symbols Are Specific Acts Or Figures, While Myths Develop And Elaborate These Symbols Into A Story Which Contains Characters And Several Episodes. The Myth Is Thus More Inclusive. But Both Symbol And Myth Have The Same Function Psychologically; They Are Man's Way Of Expressing The Quintessence Of His Experience - His Way Of Seeing His Life, His Self-image And His Relations To The World Of His Fellow Men And Of Nature - In A Total Figure Which At The Same Moment Carries The Vital Meaning Of This Experience.
Character
Men
Self
No One Can Separate Themselves From One's Social Group And Remain Healthy, Because The Very Structure Of Personality Is Dependent On The Community.
Personality
Community
Healthy
In Religion, It Is Not The Sycophants Or Those Who Cling Most Faithfully To The Status Quo Who Are Ultimately Praised. It Is The Insurgents.
Sycophants
Status Quo
Dissent
The Relationship Between Commitment And Doubt Is By No Means An Antagonistic One. Commitment Is Healthiest When It Is Not Without Doubt But In Spite Of Doubt.
Relationship
Peace
Mean
The Mature Person Becomes Able To Differentiate Feelings Into As Many Nuances, Strong And Passionate Experiences, Or Delicate And Sensitive Ones, As In The Different Passages Of Music In A Symphony. Unfortunately, Many Of Us Have Feelings Limited Like Notes In A Bugle Call.
Strong
Symphony
Mature Person
Poets Often Have A Conscious Awareness That They Are Struggling With The Daimonic, And That The Issue Is Their Working Something Through From The Depths Which Push The Self To A New Plane.
Struggle
Issues
Self
All Our Feelings, Like The Artist's Paints And Brush, Are Ways Of Communicating And Sharing Something Meaningful From Us To The World.
Meaningful
Artist
Feelings
What Kierkegaard Said About Love Is Also True Of Creativity: Every Person Must Start At The Beginning.
Creativity
Love Is
Said
Every Authentic Artist Is Engaged In This Creating Of The Conscience Of The Race, Even Though He Or She May Be Unaware Of The Fact.
Artist
Race
Creating
What Is Courage? This Courage Will Not Be The Opposite Of Despair. We Shall Often Be Faced With Despair, As Indeed Every Sensitive Person Has Been During The Last Several Decades In This Country. Hence Kierkegaard And Nietzsche And Camus And Sartre Have Proclaimed That Courage Is Not The Absence Of Despair; It Is, Rather, The Capacity To Move Ahead In Spite Of Despair.
Country
Courage
Moving
The First Thing Necessary For A Constructive Dealing With Time Is To Learn To Live In The Reality Of The Present Moment. For Psychologically Speaking, This Present Moment Is All We Have.
Reality
Firsts
Moments
... What The Artist Or Creative Scientist Feels Is Not Anxiety Or Fear; It Is Joy. I Use The Word In Contrast To Happiness Or Pleasure. The Artist, At The Moment Of Creating, Does Not Experience Gratification Or Satisfaction... Rather, It Is Joy, Joy Defined As The Emotion That Goes With Heightened Consciousness, The Mood That Accompanies The Experience Of Actualizing One's Own Potentialities.
Creativity
Artist
Creating
We Must Always Base Our Commitment In The Center Of Our Own Being, Or Else No Commitment Will Be Ultimately Authentic.
Inspirational
Commitment
Enviromental
Evil, In This System Of Ethics, Is That Which Tears Apart, Shuts Out The Other Person, Raises Barriers, Sets People Against Each Other.
People
Evil
Tears
If We Admit Our Depression Openly And Freely, Those Around Us Get From It An Experience Of Freedom Rather Than The Depression Itself.
Depressing
Ifs
In Order To Be Open To Creativity, One Must Have The Capacity For Constructive Use Of Solitude. One Must Overcome The Fear Of Being Alone.
Inspirational
Quiet People
Being Alone
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