Rules for Life
Corita Kent, also known as Sister Corita, was a nun at the Immaculate Heart Convent in Los Angeles. Well-known for her vibrant serigraphs, she was also at one time the Head of the art Department at Immaculate Heart College.
During her time, she assigned her students the task of coming up with rules for the Art Department. It is a wonderful list that can be applied as advice for all aspects of life.
- Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while.
- General duties of a student: pull everything out of your teacher, pull everything out of your fellow students.
- General duties of a teacher: pull everything out of your students.
- Consider everything an experiment.
- Be self-disciplined. This means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.
- Nothing is a mistake. There is no win and no fail. There is only make.
- The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things.
- Don’t try to create and analyse at the same time. They’re different processes.
- Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.
- “We’re breaking all of the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.” - John Cage.
Helpful hints: Always be around. Come or go to everything always. Go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully often. Save everything, it might come in handy later.
There should be new rules next week.
Some great advice here, and some can definitely stand strong as life mantras (again with the mantras).