Find Your Howl

Finding Your Howl
When clicking this link, you will be directed to Jonathan Flaum's Finding your howl. Please read it before reading my blog!

In one part of Jonathan flaum's writing, he says this:

"To find our howl we have to pay a price… This process may feel like a death and may at its most intense terrify us and at its least unsettle us. This is the price of finding our howl, our own one of a kind authentic voice, and there is no way around it…"


In this part of his writing, Jonathan is trying to make a very important point, at least in my mind he is. To find yourself and who you are as a person, you are going to have to experience things that you may never want to experience. you will have to go out of your comfort zone to find what you like and what you don't like. you may get scared, but it is the only way you are going to know who you are, and his encouragement makes it sound as if it will all be worth it. in the story that jonathan bases this on, the main wolf is mumon. mumon is a red wolf put back out into the wild. however, he didn't have his howl. mumon went through times of being ashamed, of being sad, and being scared. he was fearful for his life if he wasn't able to howl. he was sad after he killed the dear. he was ashamed of not being able to find that howl, something so important in a wolf's life. mumon had to go through these hard times until he finally found his howl once he "stepped in the fire" and looked for it. 





the poem i chose is a very classic poem. However, I chose it because when I learned about it way back when in school, it spoke to me. since then, it has always been the poem that is the most inspirational. 
this is the road not taken by robert frost. 


The Road Not Taken-Click here!

this poem speaks to me as both a creative person and just a regular person living my life. i really think that it can speak to anyone to tries to listen. it doesn't matter where you live, what kind of family you came from, or how you imagine yourself. that is what is so great about this poem.. it captures everyone. to summarize this poem is to say it deals with the choices you make. there are two roads. one road was the clear path of what everyone else has taken. the other was barely used. not one leaf in the road was stepped on. which one will you choose? it's the defining line of being a follower and a leader. the final line are the most inspirational in the whole poem. "I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." you are making yourself unique if you take the road less traveled by. stand up for yourself. be a leader. it may seem scary at first, but it will make all the difference. you will have new experiences, new scares, and new adventures. you will stand out. that may seem like a bad thing, but it isn't. it is almost as if you are "finding your howl." if you take the road that everyone else is, you are finding everybody else's howl.
as a creative person, it speaks to me in a similar way. what i learned from college, especially being in the school of media arts and studies, is that creativity is important. creativity is what is going to get you far in life, and it is what is going to make you successful. if you take the road that everyone else is taking, that is, creating what everybody else is, what will tempt businesses to hire you? your work will seem boring and unoriginal. take the scary walk and find something that has never been done before. you may get shot down or you may become famous. either way, you have to try. they want something that they have never seen before, and that is exactly what the road less traveled by represents. it represents what you as an artist feel is creative. it represents what you feel to be original. if you put your own passion and emotion, not someone else's, into your own work, you will go far.
one thing that really got to me was the way my thoughts on this poem changed. at first, when i learned about it in high school, being yourself seemed silly. you don't want to stand out. people will make fun of you, and your feelings will get hurt. in high school, it is better to fit in with everyone else. that is sad to think about, because it is almost as if we hid our talents just so we wouldn't get made fun of. now in college, i feel so confident about standing out from the rest of the group. so what if everyone else thinks i'm weird? you may be working for me one day. now my thoughts have changed to the more you stand out the better. everything that is different about you makes you that much more unique. that makes you an "original person," which in turn makes you almost like the road less traveled by. interesting how that worked out :).