I haven’t written in twelve days - the longest I’ve gone without writing in the last 8 months.
Sitting down in Wildflower Café, opening my computer, and staring at a blank page feels so scary, so here I am putting words on the page, easing a little bit of my fear, finding comfort in the fact that at least I still know how to string a sentence together, and solace in the page no longer being a white void, but now being decorated with words.
I am feeling frustrated because yesterday I was feeling inspired, ideas mingling within me, new connections and stories forming, but now, when I sit down to actually tell some of those stories, emptiness plagues me, which is quickly flooded with doubts - doubts that I have anything interesting or meaningful to write, doubts in my relatability, doubts in my intelligence, doubts in my ability to use metaphors, doubts in the utility of writing, doubts in the artistry of writing.
Beneath the doubt filled emptiness, I know there is something there, something good and real that wants to come out of me…I just can’t seem to get it out. Am I searching too hard? Am I worried too much about what other people will think or what they want to read? What if I wrote my insides without any thought that others would ever read them? What would I say? What if I wrote not from my ego, but from my heart? Or deeper yet, from my womb? That’s hard. But I think I’d say this:
My ego is choking me to death. Do I cough it up and spit it out? Or do I swallow it and let it travel through my esophagus into my intestines and out my bowles? I think it wants to move through me one last time.
Or does it? Doesn’t my ego also provide me with my perception of self? With my identity? And aren’t these necessary things for survival?
But maybe my worry is that the ego will become too inflated, causing an over-importance of self, a balloon that will burst if I don’t let a little air out.
Deflate the ego…
Wait, wait, I’m trying to write from my heart and my womb, but I’m writing about my ego. What’s deeper than that?
Lately I’m feeling trapped inside capitalism, hyper-aware of the oh so insidious ways it pervades so many aspects of life, like: the way we are told that happiness is just on the other side of one more purchase, one more material thing, one more promotion, one more mark of external validation. Once you buy the new car or the three bedroom house decorated with creature comforts, you will be happy. They say, “We promise. Happiness is just one more purchase away.”
But did you ever buy that thing or get that promotion, and feel good for a little, then revert right back to where you were? Also, the Declaration of Independence tells us that all men were created equal and that we have the unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. Not to happiness itself, but to the neverending search for it. Also, what even is happy? Is happy what we should be aiming for? I think I’m concerned less with being happy, and more with being expressed. Free. Not caged.
I think I’m still stuck in the ego…going deeper, below the layers of ego and capitalism, toward the id, I find a longing to belong. Or do I? I want both to belong, and to be different. I want to be recognized and accepted for my uniqueness, but I also want to be loved. I find myself hovering between the desire to dive in and to belong to the systems of our society, and between the desire to stay on the outside, literally outside amongst the trees. But I fear I am always hovering, unsure, failing to choose one or the other…torn between fitting in and standing out.
Maybe I am searching too hard and thinking too much…thinking about thinking. (Alan Watts: “the problem with a person who thinks all the time, is that they have nothing to think about except thoughts.”) Maybe there is no answer, maybe there are only the questions and the experience of living out the questions. How liberated we could be if we stopped trying to find answers all the time.
Or maybe, the answer, and the journey, is love.
What shifts in me if I lead with love?
I become less worried.
Less worried about the things / skills / experiences I lack, and more aware of all those that I have.
Less worried about losing the people I love, and more grateful that I feel so much love for my husband, family, and friends.
Less worried about what people think of me and more acceptance of all the weird, beautiful nuances of humans.
Leading with love also infuses a lightness to this whole life thing...like maybe we are not caught in a tragedy, but in the greatest comedy ever written.
Oh, yes, it’s a dark comedy for sure.