For the sake of itself
"The world is bursting with wonder, and yet it’s the rare productivity guru who seems to have considered the possibility that the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing might be to experience more of that wonder."
— Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Often I get very ambitious about people’s writing on their behalf. “This has to be in front of more eyes,” I’ll say to someone in a group or Mini-Retreat, encouraging them to post it somewhere or send it to the New Yorker (because that’s the only magazine I know). Or, “you just wrote the opening two paragraphs of your memoir.”
I try to frame this stuff lightly, even though I mean it with all my heart. The writing can be that good—not objectively good (whatever that even is) but so genuine, so poetic, so naked, so soul-vibratingly true, that I can’t imagine the handful of folks in our group being the only ones ever affected by it. I truly sometimes can’t help myself. I want the world to know about this piece.
As honest as this is, though, I know that on some level this is doing exactly what Soul Writing is meant to undo. There’s a miasma of approval in these remarks, an echo of the plans the world likes to make for our lives. However subtly, it creates a kind of objective; puts a ‘there’ there for our writing.
Granted, this might be precisely what the writer wants—an objective for their writing—but that is up to them, not me or anyone else. Otherwise, unsolicited plans like these might narrow the path, or cut off several of the infinite directions in which the person’s work or voice might have grown. It might add the mildest soupsant of pressure the next time they write something, knowing that someone thinks their writing is New-Yorker-level stuff.
Points are, well, pointy
I think I’m reflecting on all this because, after some months off, I’ve finally gotten back into a rhythm of long-distance walking, which has resurfaced the deep meaning—or rather, meaninglessness—it’s always had for me. The being in life with no real ‘point’ to what I’m doing except moving and breathing and connecting in kindness with others (and, ya know, eating and peeing when those become necessary).
I’ve also spent some time of late with little kids, remembering how, if left to their devices (and with their eating and peeing needs met), the ever-shifting sources of delight are always close at hand. There are no ambitions, or even plans. Imagination does most of the heavy lifting.
These reminders have eased in me the crumbling feeling of having not written a memoir yet. They also have me examining the crumbs themselves—as in, what has me ‘shoulding’ all over myself about this thing? If it was a genuine calling, something coming from my soul and pouring out my solar plexus, my body would be moving toward it in delight—or at least with a feeling of surrendered ease.
And maybe someday it will; someday I will. But not now.
Calling isn’t any one thing
This western world has so distorted our sense of purpose in a way that has many of us (who have the privilege and wherewithal to do so, of course) believing we’re meant to achieve One Great Thing, that it’s up to us to figure it out and then get to chasing it down to the exclusion of everything else.
What if we’re not for just one reason, but many? And what if those reasons are a little closer to the ground, more joyously mundane, than we’ve come to believe?
Also: what if we didn’t have to commodify every good idea, talent or gift we have? That’s another one of those weird agreements that capitalism has installed in our hardwiring, and one that I am guilty of perpetuating when I ‘celebrate’ people’s writing by insisting they march it out into the world.
I’m just remembering—and will continue to invite this in Soul Writing—that the joy is in the making, in the moving, in the connecting. Nothing needs to become anything if we don’t want it to—or if the creation itself doesn’t want to. Like, my book certainly wasn’t going to be a book; it was just a few things I wanted people to know, that I figured I’d get to them somehow. Luck and divine whatnot did the rest.
And how thankful I am for this luck, this divine whatnot, this privilege of a simple, blessed life. For now (until I forget again) I’m back to counting miles and words, keeping my own grand plans to a minimum… and keeping my plans for you to myself.
What about you?
Do you relate to the joy of letting paragraphs and steps (or whatever your version of this is) pile up between meals and bathroom breaks? Or do you feel you were born with a singular calling, or purpose—and, if so, how do you live each day in its pursuit, its fulfillment? Maybe you’re still hanging in the question, or haven’t thought about it before. All insights and wonderings are welcome in the comments.
