"Movement is Life: so long as you move, the current of Life flows through you and imbues you with divine artistic inspiration. You believe you will never attain your artistic goal: but the striving for it is its attainment. The true artist never reaches their goal. The Ideal of the true artist is a sublime chimera that ever goads them onwards, without ever being attained. Because of this, you will get discouraged, and despair, and resolve yourself to the fact that you will never become the artist you wish to be.
"And what would be the purpose of an Ideal that can be attained? The Ideal, once attained, would it remain an Ideal? And if so, once that Ideal were to be attained, what would there be left? Would that not be just as despairing, just as discouraging as the idea of never reaching the goal? This is the truth of attainment: your very suffering is also your joy, your torture is also your happiness. The unattainable Ideal moves you onward, not because you will attain it, but because you reach for it. But the Ideal remains the Ideal, true to itself, and you will never reach it. And what a tragedy it would be, should the Ideal be reached!
"Work, rather, like Nature: the horizon is never reached; it always beckons you from afar, and when you reach the point which appeared to you to be the horizon, another horizon is before you. Thus is it also with Art and the Ideal: once you reach the point you were looking up to as perfection another point of perfection will appear, and you will want to reach it, in its turn. Worry not that that point seems endlessly moving. For truly it is. And therefore movement is Life, and there is no other life than it. Going from one point of perfection to another, ever further into perfection, but never attaining it, IS the goal; for were perfection to be reached, were the horizon to be attained, all the wonderful illusion would be broken, and progress would cease.
"Therefore be content with moving towards your Ideal, without stopping, without doubting, with love and confidence: and you will reach the rewards one by one along the way. But never look behind you, for the future is ahead, towards the unattainable Ideal."
- The Living Dancer
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