The Heartbeat We Lost, and How Art Helps Us Remember

Created by Midjourney with a custom Tio moodboard

There’s an old story I first read years ago, tucked into the pages of Tim Ferriss’s book. It came back to me this week while I was sanding a panel in the woodshop, thinking about how easy it is to rush right past the good parts of our own lives. The story isn’t mine, and it didn’t begin with Ferriss, either. Its roots go all the way back to a 1963 piece by the German writer Heinrich Böll, who understood something about the human condition that most of us forget the moment we get busy. But the retelling I remember takes place in a small Mexican fishing village, so that’s how I’ll tell it now.

 
A businessman from New York had taken a rare vacation. The kind where he promised himself he wouldn’t work, wouldn’t take calls, wouldn’t scribble numbers on cocktail napkins. He was doing reasonably well at keeping that promise as he stood on the dock early one morning, coffee in hand, watching the sun climb up over the water. A small boat pulled in, its single fisherman tying off with an easy grace that comes from years of doing the same thing, the same way, without needing to impress anyone.

 
The businessman noticed the man carried only a few beautiful fish, big, silver, perfect. Enough for a solid catch, but not the sort that would set any records. Curious, he asked, “Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more?”
The fisherman smiled the kind of smile people wear when they already know the punchline. “I have enough for my family,” he said. “A few hours out, then home. I like to sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, and spend the evenings with my friends. Life is full.” The businessman blinked, baffled. Because to him, life was a ladder you climbed, not a hammock you rested in. And this fisherman, with his old boat and his contented grin, didn’t seem to realize how much more he could be doing.

 
“But you could scale,” the businessman said. “You could fish longer, buy more boats, hire crews. You could grow a whole fleet. Then build a processing plant. Then distribution. Then move to the city, maybe Los Angeles, maybe New York. You could take this global.” The fisherman listened politely. “And why would I do all that?”

Created by Midjourney with a custom Tio moodboard

The businessman straightened, warming to the pitch. “Because after twenty or thirty years, you’d make a fortune. Then you could retire. Move to a small village. Sleep late. Fish a little. Play with your children. Take a siesta with your wife. Spend your evenings with your friends.”

 
The fisherman laughed softly. “But, señor, I’m already doing that.”
Every time I revisit this story, something new rises to the surface. This time, it hit me square in the ribs. Maybe because the season has been full and scattered. Maybe because I’ve been wrestling, like so many artists do, with the tension between creating from the soul and building something that pays the bills. Or maybe because I’ve spent the last few weeks thinking about my daughter and the small, grounding rituals of making something by hand for someone you love.

 
But the simple truth wrapped inside this story feels especially sharp right now. We keep trying to build elaborate systems to earn back a life we already have access to, if only we’d stop sprinting long enough to see it. It’s the same trap so many creatives fall into when we start to measure our worth by output. By results. By scale. When we start thinking like the businessman instead of the fisherman.

 
Don’t misunderstand me. There’s nothing wrong with ambition. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to grow your craft, your audience, your impact. But there’s a difference between growing from a place of abundance and growing from a place of lack. Between creating because your soul is lit up, and creating because you’re trying to justify your existence to an imaginary board of directors.

 
The businessman in the story sees opportunity. The fisherman sees enough.
The businessman sees unrealized potential. The fisherman sees a full life.
One is optimizing. The other is inhabiting. And that’s where the lesson for us as artists lives. We cannot outsource presence. We cannot automate meaning. We cannot scale soul.

Created by Midjourney with a custom Tio moodboard. This image was based on public domain images taken on location at the North Platte Canteen.

Art-making, when it’s at its richest, is astonishingly inefficient. It asks us to move slowly, to feel deeply, to pay attention to small things most people overlook. Even the messiest, most chaotic studio practice is a form of intentional slowness. You cannot rush the layers of an encaustic piece. You cannot force cold wax to cure faster. You cannot bully a painting into revealing its next move. You can try, but the work will tell on you.

When artists forget this, we start acting like the businessman. We chase shortcuts, gimmicks, trends, bigger numbers, brighter lights. We fish longer hours, trying to haul in more than we need. We scale because we think we’re supposed to. We forget to ask whether the life we’re building is actually the one we want. And we forget that process is the point.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to value the process itself. To treat the hours in the studio the way the fisherman treats the ocean, not as a means to an end, but as the place where life actually happens. There’s real neuroscience behind this, of course. Flow states don’t arrive through panic or pressure, they arrive when skill meets challenge inside a container of deep presence. They arrive when we show up, open-handed, without trying to brute-force brilliance.

Created by Midjourney with a custom Tio moodboard. This image was based on public domain images taken on location at the North Platte Canteen.

In a world obsessed with outcomes, the process is our quiet rebellion.

And maybe this is why Bob Greene’s Once Upon a Town keeps rattling around in my mind. Researching for the next art drop I re-read Green's book about the North Platte Canteen during WWII, and it carries the same heartbeat as the fisherman’s story, except it isn’t just one man living simply and fully. It was an entire town.

North Platte wasn’t wealthy. The country wasn’t wealthy. War had tightened every belt that could be tightened. Ration books dictated what you could cook, what you could drive, whether your kid could get a pair of shoes that actually fit. Materials went where they belonged, into the hands and boots and bellies of soldiers headed overseas. Scarcity wasn’t theoretical; it was the air everyone breathed. And yet, somehow, they gave.

Every mother, father, sister, butcher, baker, ranch kid, and railroad man carved out something, time, food, love, presence, and carried it down to the depot. Not because they had extra, but because they had enough. Enough to share. Enough to matter. Enough to remind strangers rolling through on troop trains that their lives were worth the sacrifice.

Greene talks about how that downtown, the one pressed right up against the tracks, used to be the thumping heart of the town. Passengers used to spill out into businesses run by people who knew their names. Then the depot came down, the interstate bypassed the town, passenger trains stopped, strip malls rose and fell, and eventually Walmart became the new town square. The pulse drifted. The old rhythm faded. And yet the memory remains, an echo of a community that understood presence better than we do now.

Created by Midjourney with a custom Tio moodboard. This image was based on public domain images taken on location at the North Platte Canteen. This is Rae Wilson, the young women whose idea for a Canteen lit the fuse.

What hits me hardest is this: the North Platte Canteen wasn’t built on abundance. It was built on people choosing to show up with whatever they had. Choosing to offer the fullness of a moment when they couldn’t offer much else. Choosing humanity over hurry. It’s the same message as the fisherman’s, just spoken by an entire town instead of a single man. A town saying, “We already know what matters. We don’t need to become something bigger to justify it.”

That’s part of why the December Art Drop is a Canteen piece. It’s my small way of remembering. Of honoring the ones who lived slowly and sacrificially because the moment asked it of them. Of saying that beauty still belongs here. And maybe reminding us, myself included, that the heartbeat of a community isn’t measured in growth charts or revenue streams. It’s measured in how we show up for one another.

Created by Midjourney with a custom Tio moodboard. This image was based on public domain images taken on location at the North Platte Canteen. This painting is Eddie Slattery who sold his shirt at auction to support the canteen. He went to St. Pats Catholic school. I coached and taught some of his great grand kids.

When I was in Portugal, wandering the streets of Messejana with my camera, I kept noticing small, ordinary moments that felt like they held entire worlds. The way light fell across an old door. The sound of distant church bells echoing down narrow streets. The quiet conversations between color and texture in chipped stucco walls. None of these things were the “point” of my walk. And yet, they became the point. The fisherman understands something many of us forget. When your life is already aligned with what matters most, more isn’t the answer. Presence is.

And that brings me back to another Rogue Art Drop here in North Platte. Sunday, December 21st. A new piece, hidden somewhere in town, waiting for someone curious enough and playful enough to find it. It’s free to participate and fun for families, just a way to invite people to slow down, wander, explore their own city with fresh eyes, the way I did in Portugal. It’s my version of the fisherman’s siesta. A small act of joy tucked into the middle of the season.
Because in the end, creativity lives in the pauses. It lives in the spaces between the big plans.

It lives in the afternoons when the light is just right and something inside us finally exhales. So here’s my encouragement this week. Notice where you’ve been acting like the businessman. Notice where you’ve been trying to scale a life that might already be enough. Notice where you’ve been trading presence for productivity, meaning for momentum. And when you catch yourself doing it, and you will, come back to the fisherman.

Come back to the small things that make your life full. Come back to the slow, tender rhythms of your own process. Come back to why you started creating in the first place.

The work you’re doing is already part of a good life. Don’t race past it on your way to a version of success that looks suspiciously like the life you already live. The fisherman didn’t need more boats to be fulfilled. Neither do we need more proof to justify that we’re already artists.
We just need to keep showing up.

Keep making.
Keep growing.

And keep remembering that, sometimes, the richest thing we can do is exactly what we’re doing ...right now.

Created by Midjourney with a custom Tio moodboard. This image was based on public domain images taken on location at the North Platte Canteen. In this painting Lloyd Synovec is playing piano. He settled in North Platte. His son Mark and I were chums in HS.