I love Lindsey Stirling’s “The Arena.”

It’s so beautiful, so powerful. And, because I’m an artist myself, its message expresses something deep within my own heart.

Every artist who shares her work with others must brave the indifference or contempt of her audience. Every artist who creates must confront her own implacable inner judge.
 

“It is not the critic who counts;
not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,
or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena…”

– Theodore Roosevelt,
“Citizenship in a Republic”