Navel Gazing

Navel gazing.  I heard this phrase twice in the past week.  It leads me to consider:

Is blogging naval gazing?

I’d be willing to bet that 90% of all blogs are a bit navel-gazey-ish. This blog definitely is.  I write mostly about my own personal journey.  I don’t engage the audience as much as I should.  I use it as it means to work through my own issues.  I’m using it right now to think through this thought about navel gazing.  I’m…navel gazing about navel gazing, if you will. 

But I also wonder, couldn’t one make the argument that the very act of writing is navel gazing?

Here’s the definition: self-indulgent or excessive contemplation of oneself or a single issue, at the expense of a wider view.

Self-indulgent? Um, yes.  There are few things less self indulgent than writing.  Penning personal thoughts, stories, ideas and displaying them because…because they are just THAT good.  Because the world needs to read them.   Admittedly, it’s pretty self indulgent.

So then, is all art navel gazing?

Creating anything requires a fair amount of introspection.  It takes time to write and edit a piece, just as it takes time to make a movie, or sculpt a sculpture.  That creative time is spent considering, pondering, expressing from within.  Art can only come from one’s mind, or from one’s gut…a gut which just happens to be embellished by a navel.  Hence, all art comes from the belly button. Or all art is a belly button? Or all belly buttons are art?  Art and bellybuttons require gazing?

Where am I going with this?  Nowhere really.  I can’t walk and stare at my navel at the same time.

I’ll finish with this question: Aren’t we all navel gazing most of the time?  We think mostly about the life we are living, whether we love it or hate it.  Whether we’re being treated fairly or unfairly.  Whether we have enough or too little.  Whether it’ll be Dany or John Snow that takes the Iron Throne.  Or Aria, I’m pulling for Aria.

I digress.  Easy to do when gazing into the inner-workings of the navel.

Enough with this.  The world passes us by while we sit thinking about ourselves.  Art comes from within.  Writing comes from within.  Both are meaningless without a world to receive them.  Both are received poorly by the world if the world isn’t reflected at least a little bit in them.  Don’t you agree?   What I mean to say is, we have to look up from the belly and see the world, so that we can create a thing that reflects that world…

because the world is full of navel-gazers.