The concentration of a small child at play is analogous to the concentration of the artist of any discipline. In real play, which is real concentration, the child is not only outside time, he is outside himself. He has thrown himself completely into whatever it is that he is doing. A child playing a game, building a sand castle, painting a picture, is completely in what he is doing. His self-consciousness is gone; his consciousness is wholly focused outside himself.
I had just witnessed this in Crosswicks, observing an eighteen-month-old lying on her stomach on the grass watching a colony of ants, watching with total, spontaneous concentration. And I had played ring-around-a-rosy with her; we skipped around in a circle, grandparents, parents, assorted teenagers, wholly outside ourselves, holding hands, falling in abandon onto the lawn, joining in the child’s shrieks of delighted laughter.
And with her we were outside self and outside time.
When we are self-conscious, we cannot be wholly aware; we must throw ourselves out first. The throwing ourselves away is the act of creativity. So, when we wholly concentrate, like a child in play, or an artist at work, then we share in the act of creating. We not only escape time, we also escape our self-conscious selves.
– Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1972, 10-1.
To add to that wonderful quote: There is a perennial reward in creating. Your entire being is composed into harmony with yourself, your work and everything around you. Your innermost mind awakens to self-knowledge and much more. When you create this harmony with heart and mind you will have touched a source of peace and happiness.
I read a quote years ago (I don’t know the author) and rewrote it to suit my life and projects.