One of the book's most compelling themes is that meaning cannot simply be adopted from someone else's life. Advice, traditions, and beliefs may all be valuable, but eventually each of us must discover what genuinely carries significance within our own experience.

There is a particular tension that many artists and creatives will recognise. A sense of something wanting to be expressed, alongside the realities and limitations that shape how, or whether, that expression can take form. This tension is not only practical. It is often deeply personal, touching on questions of identity, purpose, and what it means to bring something of oneself into the world. ...in a world that is more often than not associated with a harsh and destructive bo