Hold the paradoxes with tenderness.
Listen to your fear, but tend to your hope.
What I’ve learned as I practice this skill is that my work cannot ignite any sort of emotion or meaning in another person if it has not first ignited something deeply honest in myself. The most arduous work of a writer, I’ve found, is in the constant self-discovery, the neverending search for what may never be found but can be accepted, even embraced.
I finished reading another book today. It’s getting late as I write this - late for this midlifer, nearing 8 PM - but I gathered fragments of what I’d read into a spiral-bound notebook, where I keep track of the pearl necklaces of words other minds and hearts have conjured and shared, and that I am privileged to understand on some level. As I flipped through the pages, my heart awoke from its lukewarm slumber.
You see, I’ve convinced myself lately that I have nothing to impart to this world, nothing much to leave behind. I suppose the grandiosity of believing in those lofty dreams of my childhood, of chasing that elusive Something Greater, has caught up to me. Nowadays, I feel worn and haggard, too overplayed to matter much to anyone beyond my extended family or close circle of friends.
It’s the age-old self-pity that (yes, I know) surfaces now. It’s pathetic, and I can sympathize with others who engage in ongoing interior battles that can never be won. Yet I’ve convinced myself that the war in which I am immersed is one that dare not be shared. My inner critic abuses me, taunts me every day. I’ve come to realize that complaining (as I am doing here now, but stay with me for a moment) tends to be a superficial expression of an underlying unfulfilled need.
What is mine? That I am lonely, that I feel forgotten and overlooked. This is not to say that I expect perfect strangers to satiate the parts of me that have been neglected, because this is my responsibility to attend to them. I know that. Nor do I believe that others are obligated to pat me on the back and temporarily relieve the ache in my heart. Again, my responsibility.
But books lead me both deeper into myself and deeper into another dimension altogether. I am fascinated by what others find important, worth noting, and often these intersect with my own musings from day to day. Reading consoles the pangs of wanting to belong, because I remember - we all belong.
When I struggle to find my way through this increasingly isolating society, I revisit the crude scratches of phrases and words of other authors that speak to me now, and perhaps will speak to you:
The thing about loving a stranger is you can guess,
’s poetry collection, You Better Be Lightning
but can never be sure, what they are privately surviving
on their journey to help others survive.
— From
Someone will come for you.
from her latest book, Soul Shift
—
How do I get to the mountaintop without legs?
— Viola Davis from her memoir, Finding Me
Proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life.
— Tim O’Brien from his novel, The Things They Carried
So much of the heroism of motherhood is the ability to swallow the sword.
— Jessi Klein from her essays on motherhood, I’ll Show Myself Out
Life is a million choices, and every choice is a choice not to do something else.
— Kerry Egan from her stories about being a hospice chaplain, On Living
What feels like death, and loss, and finality - it’s never really the last word.
from his memoir, The Country of the Blind
—
I realize something as I sort through these gems: that reading opens worlds within us. But so does writing. And the very thing - writing - that I mostly believe I should give up becomes the driving force for me to carry on. Because when I read the constellation of what other authors have dared to put into the world through their deepest hardship and pain, I remember that their words and their stories are often the only consolation I can clutch when I feel like giving up.
Though their journeys vary, and will likely never intersect with mine in this world, I feel a sense of camaraderie with them, as I do with all authors who touch on what is real and true about what it means to be human. And even if I never attain their same level of notoriety, there might be a word or phrase I have written from my own experience that reaches into the dried up wells of another human and fills them, refreshes them, revitalizes them.
See, writing opens up worlds within us, too. What I’ve learned as I practice this skill is that my work cannot ignite any sort of emotion or meaning in another person if it has not first ignited something deeply honest in myself. The most arduous work of a writer, I’ve found, is in the constant self-discovery, the neverending search for what may never be found but can be accepted, even embraced. It’s living the questions rather than desperately digging for answers that cannot be given to us, to paraphrase Rilke.
The crux of this liminal space between hope and fear is this: that we must approach the paradoxes inside us with great tenderness. To sit in the darkness and allow the metamorphosis to happen - in its own time, in its own way. To straddle the tension that happens when half of us is petrified of losing everything and the other half, anticipating what comes next.
I’m thinking of another form of artistry now: music. Lyrics from the song, Last Train by The Midnight pertain to the idea that we are part light, part dark —kind of like Yin and Yang. Both, together, compose the totality of who we are.
What I love about reading is precisely what I love about writing: that I can access clarity in profound and life-changing ways when someone puts into words an experience I have not been able to articulate for myself. And then, a cascade of insights follow, sparks that draw my attention to what I might be able to contribute to the conversation, what I can add to the pool of meaning for others to clasp when they find themselves in the pit of loneliness and on the edge of despair.
This pertains to us all, not just to me but to you, as well. The greatest poverty of our day, in my view, is that most of us don’t believe that our lives mean much of anything. We think we are just another speck on the timeline of infinity. In a way, we are. But in a truer sense, the fact that you and I exist right here, right now, is a remarkable testament to the tenacity of life.
I am convinced that there is some contribution, however magnificent or miniscule it may be, that only you can offer. And whatever that is begins with what is placed on your heart, the way you become a soft landing place for someone in your life who needs you right now, the fact that your experiences and personality and worldview are not only shaped by others, but also impact the people who bump into you, even if fleetingly.
The work that only you can do, I cannot. And the work I am meant to do, you cannot. To believe that one must supersede or surpass the other is possibly the greatest fallacy of our time.