Quote of the Day: Twyla Tharp on Daily Inspiration

We often believe that the safest life is the one we can predict, same routines, same roles, same comfortable results. But predictable can quietly become a cage, and that’s where Twyla Tharp offers a more optimistic truth: “The only thing I fear more than change is no change. The business of being static makes me nuts”.

Notice the honesty: change is scary. New terrain asks for beginner energy, bruises the ego, and threatens our sense of competence. Yet Tharp flips the ranking, she fears stagnation more, because stasis doesn’t just preserve what you have; it slowly drains what you are. It turns your days into maintenance: protecting habits you’ve outgrown, defending identities that no longer fit, rehearsing the same conversations until they calcify.

“The business of being static” is a diagnosis. Staying the same isn’t neutral; it’s work. It’s the paperwork of avoidance, endless small decisions made to keep everything from shifting. If that sounds familiar, use the quote as a lever: choose one area where you’ve been “managing” life instead of living it, and introduce a deliberate, modest disruption. Not a reinvention fantasy, just a move that restores courage to your calendar and discipline to your craft.

Twyla Tharp earned her authority by making reinvention a practice, not a personality, revolutionizing modern dance while crossing borders between ballet, Broadway, concert stages, and pop collaborations without losing rigor.

Today, pick one repeatable experiment: change the first 30 minutes of your work, draft the awkward email you’ve been postponing, or practice the skill that makes you feel clumsy. Keep it small enough to do, real enough to matter, and let motion be your proof that you’re still alive.