Cart Before the Horse

In praise of structure, labor, and containers for creativity

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In the delightful 1989 film Field of Dreams, Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) hears a voice instructing, “If you build it, he will come.” It’s left to Ray to understand what the voice is suggesting and whether or not to trust its direction. He does, of course, and the film ultimately tells the story of a man taking the seemingly indefensible risk of plowing over his cornfield and his family’s livelihood to create a baseball diamond in its place. Ray finds the faith that, as I think most people remember the phrase, if you build it, they will come, and it pays off in ways he could never have imagined.

Field of Dreams is a modern myth with instructions on living and one of the most memorable movies of my childhood. Ray decided to Listen to himself and Build something. It wasn’t the right decision within capitalism or social expectations. But it also wasn’t merely a matter of faith.

The line between the “madman” and the “wise man” often comes down to whether or not a fantasy can be translated into the external universe. It’s about the capacity to birth that invisible direction or hunch into the time-bound, three-dimensional, physical world. What’s required is a simultaneous devotion to the inner vision and the labor, repetition, and mundane structures needed to make it a reality.

When I first opened my private practice, I repeated that line over and over to myself: If you build it, they will come. I needed to believe that the leap of faith I was taking was going to pay off. A bit of synchronicity had delivered me an ideal, inexpensive office before I’d even begun looking. It felt like the right container in which to grow as a clinician and support my clients. That word “container” is one we use a lot in the world of psychotherapy or psychoanalysis. The vulnerable work of therapeutic intimacy struggles to take root without the right conditions. Safety and security. Quiet. A clear sense of privacy. Without a basic foundation of these things, the clinical skills and intention of the therapist begin to lose relevancy. In many ways, much like a plant trying to grow without a pot, the container of therapy is just as important as the therapy itself. So when I came upon that particular office as a young clinician, I signed the lease. It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. I needed a space if I was going to embark on the larger work I hoped to do. I didn’t have clients yet, but I trusted they would come. And they did.

At the same time, there was another phrase I repeated frequently as I tried to trust that the financial risks I was taking would deliver and that committing to monthly rent without a single client wasn’t a bad idea. I’m not sure where this other phrase came from, but I remember articulating to myself and others that I was intentionally putting the cart before the horse. I needed to acknowledge that I was doing things a little bit out of order, that I was taking a risk without any guarantees, and that it was what I needed to do. Don’t put the cart before the horse, we’re told. To do so, the admonition implies, is to get ahead of oneself. To do things out of proper sequence. Yet there are times, I’ve learned, in which we need to do just that, to put the cart before the horse and let the container take the lead.

I was reminded this month of the value of letting the structure lead when I committed to

Jami Attenberg

’s #100wordsofsummer challenge to write 1,000 words a day for two weeks straight.

I tend to follow inner direction and organic inspiration in my work. I trust that instinct will usually take me where I need to go. Yet even as the inner direction clarifies, deliberate, consistent work is needed to bring it to fruition. I’ve been pondering a big new writing project for many months but had yet to write a single word. What’s been missing, I learned, was a new container in which to pour my ideas. I needed a simple structure, a goal, a repetitive task of so many words over so many days to begin translating ideas into sentences on a page. Brick by brick. Bird by bird. Day by day.

The common, somewhat antiquated advice to writers to “get your butt in a chair” has never been helpful to me. I can stay in my chair thinking about this thing I want to write without knowing how or where to start. If I’m intimidated by the scope of something, or if I’m not yet feeling inspired, I can get locked in a freeze state and weeks can pass without progress. I can very well sit in that chair for hours without any sense of accomplishment.

But with this new instruction to write one thousand words daily for two weeks, I could suddenly see a path and progress. I’d sit down, usually without knowing what section I would tackle, and find that as I began to chip away at 1,000 words, the determination to write anything would turn into something. A doorway would appear. Actual pages began to emerge. Creativity. The beginnings of something. With the right structure, I discovered anew that creative progress was possible. I had to put the cart before the horse again. I had to let the container and the form take the lead.

Hilma af Klint, The Dove, No. 2, Group IX/UW, The SUW/UW Series, 1915

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I’m Satya Doyle Byock, psychotherapist, author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood, and director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies. My work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, Oprah Daily, NPR, The BBC, The New York Post, The Tamron Hall Show, Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper, Literary Hub, and on podcasts such as Apple News in Conversation and The Joseph Campbell Foundation Podcast.