Writer Sailor Bob Adamson once said, “What’s wrong with right now unless you think about it.”
It is true, isn’t it? Everything is fine until you start to think about all kinds of nonsense, about how things should be and how others may look at you, and, the damnedest of all things is, you compare.
But aren’t our lives full of problems?
Maybe. Or you may look at it a different way. Ask yourself: Are the problems real or make-believe? Are they problems to be lived through and not shunned and pushed aside?
In other words, are the problems in our lives self-made and self-imposed?
I tell myself this:
1. There are no problems that need fixing. One time, my wife told me to pull over so she could go help a severely autistic boy running in traffic. I got up yesterday and cleaned the old carpet. That’s a kind of fixing, no? No. They are not the same. My wife didn’t fix the boy in traffic. I didn’t reverse the wear and tear on the carpet. We were not fixing problems. We reacted to life situations. It was natural, non-reflective, and nearly unthinking.
2. What are manufactured problems? Do this thing, some say, and you will be rich. Is not being rich a problem? Do this (speak or dance a certain way, for example); you will get noticed. Is it really bad to not be noticed? If so, why do we build fences? Don’t we have blinds on our windows?
3. Aren’t the dialogues in Good Will Hunting stirring? Isn’t it true that you can read all you want about the Sistine Chapel but won’t know it until you step inside? But then again, why do you need to go to the Sistine Chapel, or for that matter, the Great Wall or the Great Pyramid of Giza? Are these also manufactured needs? It is ok to travel. But to think you need to travel to feel alive is pushing it.
4. I am not done with Good Will Hunting. The Robin William character said (something to the effect that) you won’t know love until you have held your wife’s hand for two months while she dies. What’s going on? I say to myself. Do we really need these highs and lows of emotion to know love? Can love not be quiet, shy, and rarely roar? Isn’t that kind of quiet love better for some?
I am a writer. I have read people advising others about all kinds of things pertaining to writing.
It is, of course, normal to want to write something that people will read. I am doing that right now, am I not?
It is natural.
But their advice goes further. They tell you to be vulnerable, be more relatable, start with a hook, tell people what they need to know, help readers solve a problem, give them the results they can expect to have, not possible outcomes , don’t give them options, lead them, etc.
These are not necessarily bad advice. It only becomes bad when it makes you forget why you write (build, paint, play the piano, or pursue mathematics) in the first place.
If you do these things only to get noticed, you should cease and regroup. Do these things because you want to. If anyone cares to participate or partake, great. If not, it’s ok too. Anything more would be overdone.
Go where no one goes to. That’s where you wanted your endeavors to take you in the first place, right? Someplace secluded, which affords you a clearer view?
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