Tag: writing

Open, Honest and Real

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In this day and age, the above principle is a tough ship to navigate. I feel like I know three camps of people: people who epitomize the acronym “TMI” and let it all hang out, to just about everyone they see, meet or greet in real life and on-line, and then they are utterly shattered when they are used or taken advantage of; then there are the people who are so private, so completely protected by a wafting sense of mystery and secrecy, leaving everyone who meets them totally frustrated, always yearning to find the hole to scratch and find the actual beating heart and true, open, flowing emotions, under the veneer of steely, calculated collectedness; and finally, there are a vast amount of people who work desperately to keep up and preserve a cheerful, carefree image for everyone, online and offline to see, but in person, seem to be staving off a loneliness and a yearning for connection, underneath the flimsy, cardboard, surface-y, semblance of it all. I think that I have vacillated in between all three of these camps, for most of my life.

People who read my blog often comment on the fact that I don’t mention my family members’ names. People who know some of the major crises I have experienced in my life (by this middle time in life, we all have gone through at least one or two “major biggies”), are sometimes curious why I don’t choose to write about these events. The reality is, I’m still navigating my ship of disclosure, trying to find the waters that are comfortable to me. At the same time, I am not a pirate. I respect the other ships on the sea, and I steer clear of their own private, personal journeys. Their journeys are not mine, and their ships are made to sail along different waters, than where I am headed. Even if we do find ourselves in the same pool of calm or stormy seas, I can only speak for my part of the adventure. How I am experiencing the waves and the turbulence, and even the calm, still waters, may be different than the other ships, because they are built differently that I am, and they carry different cargo and baggage than I do.

In the end, as important as authenticity is to me, and as much as I value real, heartfelt connection, I value the relationships at the sacrosanct table of my life, far more than anything. It’s a fine line to cross and to navigate, especially as a writer. Recently, I was telling my husband how frustrated I am by the fact that my life feels so full of little, aggravating interruptions and I often wish that I could disappear for vast amounts of time, to just focus on writing. But then the “aha moment” came to me, that all of my writing comes from my day-to-day experiences and my interactions with the people at “my table” and even the people standing around the table or even with the people, in the far corners of the rooms of my life. These experiences are priceless to my understanding of myself and thus the extension of myself, my sacred practice of writing, which helps me make sense of that deeper understanding of myself.

Today, with this honest, candid inside view of my thought/writing experience, I have invited you, my faithful friends and readers, to some very special seats, at my table. Thank you for taking the seat, and allowing me to share. I hope that you will sit and stay awhile, and I promise to keep your seat empty for you, when you return again. It is then that I will give you the same warm smile that I wear on my face right now, thankful for your place settings, in my life, making me feel worthy, understood and connected and open and honest and real.

What She Said

One of my favorite authors has always been Anna Quindlen. When I was young, I would eagerly await our family’s subscription to Newsweek and flip to the last page, to her column. It never failed to delight me and to provoke me to ponder. When I was in my twenties, I read her novel Black and Blue, which is one of the first books to really show the terror of stalking and the deadly reality of domestic violence. Another of one of her books, One True Thing, which was made into a movie with Meryl Streep and Renee Zewelleger, is one of those book/movies that has stuck in my memory for years. I think Anna Quindlen is a master with the pen. So, when I was at the library the other day, I checked out another one of her books called Being Perfect. It is a small, short, tome that reads more like an essay. I believe that I may have read it before, but somehow the Universe knew that I needed to read it again.

The premise of the book is that a lot of us start out in life, trying to live and to be, a formula of perfection. She claims that we morph ourselves into various forms of that formula, depending on what stage of life we are in – our early school days, our college years, being a parent, in our marriages, our various careers, etc. She claims that by being in what she calls a “lockstep” of trying to be perfect, we are cheating ourselves, and all of those who are having experiences with us, out of a true, authentic, in-depth experience that can only be unique to us. Computers are perfect. We are so much more imperfectly, deliciously complex.

When you first start taking your writing seriously, I think all writers fall into that “it’s all, already been said” mentality. I recently read about an author who was dying of cancer and claimed that she didn’t want to be that “cliche of another writer, writing about dying.” I love Anna Quindlen’s take on that in Being Perfect. This is what she said:

“Sometimes I meet young writers, and I like to share with them the overwhelming feeling I have about our work, the feeling that every story has already been told. Once you’ve read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time ever has. That is her own personality, her own voice. If she is doing Fitzgerald imitations, she can stay home. If she is giving readers what she thinks they want instead of what she is, she should stop trying.

But if her books reflects her character, the authentic shape of her life and her mind, then she may well be giving readers a new and wonderful gift. Giving it to herself, too. And that is true of music and art and teaching and medicine.”

She also applies this philosophy to parenting. This is what she says:

“You will convince yourself that you will be a better parent that your parents and their parents have been. But being a good parent is not generational, it is deeply personal, and it all comes down to this: If you can bring your children the self that you truly are, as opposed to some amalgam of manners and mannerisms, expectations and fears that you have acquired as a carapace along the way, you will be able to teach them by example not to be terrorized by the narrow and parsimonious expectations of the world, a world that often likes to color within the lines when a spray of paint, or a scribble of crayon, would be much more satisfying.”

My daughter, a budding artist, brought home a paper mache project the other day, in which she had decorated with words and ideas that inspired her. One quote on the project was from Salvador Dali. It said:

“Have no fear of perfection. You’ll never reach it.”

I asked her why that particular quote struck her. She said, “Well, if a great artist like Salvador Dali knew that he wouldn’t reach perfection, why should I worry about it? It makes me feel freer.”

I think that I can only end this day’s post with a smile.

Three Steps to Nowhere

Well, this is the earliest that I have been awake in a while. My husband headed back to work today. Break over. This is going to take some “easing into.” Probably like a lot of us, in the last few days, I’ve been reflecting a lot about what I want to do in 2019. I’ve also been thinking a lot about my blog and what direction I should take it.

I read recently that people love to read blogs that offer numbered steps to perfection or numbered tips to achieving your goals. So, if I wrote a blog entitled “Three Steps to Your Perfect Life” or “Five Guaranteed Ways to Lose All of the Extra Holiday Pounds”, they would most likely be my best looked-at and most read blogposts. Unfortunately, I don’t have all of the answers to make bullet lists to cover all (or any, for that matter) of life’s predicaments. In fact, the older that I get, the less I feel certain about any of my “sureties”. I’m not a disingenuous person. I can’t pretend to be an expert on something that I’m not.

I read once that maybe life’s journey isn’t about becoming anything, but it’s more about “unbecoming” everything that we take on that really isn’t “a fit”; undoing everything that isn’t really authentically ourselves. I’ve heard and experienced, that people who live to be elderly, often revert back to child-like states in their last years – becoming more open, alive in the moment, and pure in their emotions. I’m not sure what steps to take to get back to that state of purity. Maybe that just happens in the natural progression of life. Maybe that clean simplicity is a great gift of aging. Sorry, but I just don’t have the answers. I don’t have the steps or the bullet points. But I do have the curiosity to observe it all, in this second stage of adulting, and I enjoy blogging about my experiences and observations. So, until those magic simple steps and perfect bullet lists appear in my head, this questioning and observing and discovering and the laughing at the absurdity of some of it, is the format that this particular blog is going to stay in, at least until my perfect answers arrive.

There is a scene, which takes place some time in the 1950s, in the excellent movie, The Wife, in which an older, very talented but unread female author tries to persuade the young, talented, aspiring heroine of The Wife, to quit writing. The older writer claims that all of the decisions about what makes good writing is decided by men and therefore, writing will be a hopeless and pointless career, for the young female aspiring author.

The young, and some would say “naive” writer firmly states to her older friend, “A writer has to write.”

The cynical, experienced woman retorts back, “A writer HAS to be read, honey.”

I agree with both of them. Thanks for staying with me. I look forward to our future connection, epiphanies, and awakenings, in the upcoming year!

“Any product that needs a manual to work, is broken.” – Elon Musk

To Thine Own Self

I think the reason why President H.W. Bush’s memorial is hitting so many of us so hard is because we are searching for a simpler sincere truth.  We are searching for common values that can resonate with all of us, from our deepest inner beings.  I don’t discuss politics with my friends.  I don’t consider myself a particularly politically-oriented person, yet so many of my friends, in all different age groups, whose political leanings I honestly could only guess at, have expressed a certain wistfulness for the days when our country seemed easier to define.  We had a unified pride in the United States, while still understanding that we had differences in opinions.  The vision and love and respect for the United States seemed to be more of an understood commonality back then, than it seems to be now.  A friend of mine who now has a grandchild, told a few of us, those of us who are mothers in our forties, that she hopes that we have raised a generation of children that will bring things back to a simpler, respectful honor.  I do, too. . . .  I do, too.

President Bush (’41) was supposedly a wonderful letter writer.  He hand wrote many, many letters.  I think that is the wonderful part of being naturally inclined to write.  I told my husband recently that one of my favorite things about this blog, is that my children and grandchildren will have my voice.  They may better understand me and thus, my influence on them, by my writings.  That is why I aim to be as authentic as I can be, when I write.  I want them to know me, at my very core, goodness and flaws.  I want them to glean understanding of me, my points of view, my interests, my cares and loves, so that they can better understand how I may have touched their lives.  I think that it is a blessing to have the need to write.  I am so grateful for this inclination.

I watched an interview with Jenna Bush Hager, in which she was introducing her new baby daughter to George and Barbara Bush, her grandparents.  Jenna asked her grandfather what words of wisdom that he thinks of, to give to the newly born babies of this world.  He thought for a moment and then he stated very firmly, “Be true to yourself.  To Thine Own Self Be True.”