Shaping Tomorrow, Turning the World's Edges Into Art
Created at: October 14, 2025
When you shape your own tomorrow, you sharpen the world's edges into art. — Toni Morrison
Self-Authorship as First Act of Creation
At the outset, the line insists that agency is an aesthetic force: when you shape your own tomorrow, you are not merely planning—you are composing. Toni Morrison repeatedly ties self-authorship to language, reminding us in her Nobel Lecture (1993) that “we do language… that may be the measure of our lives.” In this sense, deciding, naming, and narrating one’s future becomes the very medium through which reality is formed.
Edges as Margins of Power and Possibility
From there, the world’s edges evoke sites of friction—borders where identities meet structures of race, gender, and class. Morrison’s *Playing in the Dark* (1992) shows how the American imagination was forged against its margins, indicating that cultural creativity arises where pressure is greatest. To sharpen those edges is not to smooth them away; rather, it is to bring their contours into focus so they can cut through denial and reveal new shapes of meaning.
Art as Transformation, Not Escapism
In Morrison’s oeuvre, art does not escape pain; it refashions it. *Beloved* (1987) converts the unspeakable into a form that can be held, examined, and finally mourned. By crafting structure, rhythm, and voice, art metabolizes grief into understanding. Morrison’s Nobel Lecture underscores this responsibility: language can imprison or liberate. Thus, the act of shaping tomorrow becomes an ethical craft—using form to carry weight without collapsing under it.
From Personal Futures to Collective Forms
Consequently, a self-shaped tomorrow alters the wider silhouette of the world. The personal narrative ripples outward—family stories, neighborhood practices, national myths. *The Bluest Eye* (1970) reveals how inherited gazes deform young lives; to rewrite the future is to disrupt that gaze, offering counter-images that others can inhabit. In a parallel register, W. E. B. Du Bois’s *The Souls of Black Folk* (1903) names “double consciousness,” mapping a perilous edge that, once articulated, becomes a site for new collective art.
Craft, Practice, and the Sharpness of Form
To make this concrete, consider a block-long alley turned gallery: a few neighbors organize, sketch, prime walls, and invite stories from elders. Draft by draft, the murals gain edge—lines tighten, colors balance, histories surface. In the same way, writing a grant proposal, starting a co-op bakery, or building a mutual-aid network are aesthetic labors; revision, rehearsal, and routine are the whetstones. Sharpening is discipline—care that gives edges purpose rather than leaving them to wound at random.
Risk, Harm, and the Ethics of Language
Even so, edges can cut. Morrison warns that oppressive language does more than represent violence; it enacts it (Nobel Lecture, 1993). The same tools that clarify truth can also harden cruelty. Therefore, shaping tomorrow requires vigilance: testing metaphors for harm, listening for whose stories are silenced, and refusing forms that make human beings disposable. Precision must serve care; otherwise, sharpness becomes spectacle.
An Invitation to Everyday Aesthetics
Ultimately, Morrison’s line invites a daily practice of making. Begin by naming the future you can credibly sustain, then gather collaborators, materials, and constraints that will hone rather than dull your intentions. Tell the story—on a page, a wall, a spreadsheet, a stage—and let feedback temper the blade. As your tomorrow takes shape, the world’s rough edges answer back, and in that dialogue, something artful emerges: a form sturdy enough to hold hope, and sharp enough to cut a passage through what resists it.