Austin Kleon

And then we had this kind of like, you know, it was the first time I'd actually lived with other artists in a sense.

Cause my wife's very creative, but I don't think she necessarily thinks of herself as an artist.

Um,

So it was just like a really funny time.

And I had expected to be the teacher and I ended up being the student.

Well, I think the best teachers are students.

You know, they remain students no matter what they're teaching.

And, you know, most of the teachers I've talked to hint that they feel that they learn as much from their students as their students learn from them.

I think that's actually one of the great pitches for becoming a teacher, actually, is that it's in the course of trying to teach someone something that you know that you realize what it is that you know and what it is that you don't know.

And that was my experience with the kids too, because kids are great because they'll ask you enough questions that suddenly the universe becomes mysterious to you.

You know, like you're sitting around having a cup of coffee and the kid comes up and says, well, if God created the universe, who created God?

And all of a sudden you're like, I don't know.

Let's ask your mother.

That was one of the great things that happened, too, is my kids kind of taught me that I didn't need to know everything.

You know, that it was not as important to know everything as it is to know how to go about maybe finding out.

And that was one of the things I relied on a lot with them, and I still do, which is,

I don't know the answer to that.

How do you think we should figure it out?

You know, and then all of a sudden we go on this journey together of exploring.

In the creative person's life, and I think it's probably true of leaders too, there's these modes of knowing and not knowing.