Category: The Writing Life

#Trust30 Prompt: I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Think of a time when you didn’t think you were capable of doing something, but then surprised yourself.  How will you surprise yourself this week?

How well this prompt goes with the previous one! Yesterday I was annoyed and irritated with the prompt because it seemed like writing it was repeating thoughts about which I had already written.

At age forty-six I didn’t think I had the ability to do all that was involved in getting a Ph.D. in History. First came two years of seminars with their attendant papers that required original research, most of it interacting with primary documents. Then came comprehensive examinations in which I had to demonstrate that I knew, well, basically everything that had occurred in history since Creation (no kidding!). Then, the greatest terror of all: the dissertation.

Basically, the dissertation is the biggest term paper you ever saw, on steroids. Its threat came in that suddenly I was the expert, and I was the only one accountable for the work I was doing. Juggling my family and work responsibilities with late nights researching and writing sandwiched between trips to Europe took its toll.

Added to this was the palpable excitement of the chase: doing detective work in the archives of some of the most wonderful libraries on the planet only increased my fears of finishing. After all, it doesn’t get any better than working in the rare manuscripts room of the British Museum after, and before, scones and tea. Then there was the day a worker in the rare manuscripts room went “postal” and threatened to take hostage a patron whose “crime” had been to take an extra plastic bag and a pencil from the museum! All this excitement would end when I finished the dissertation. I went from not thinking I could finish, to not wanting to finish, especially because of perks like this glorious drama of the Rare Mss Room, where not only were workers going berserk, but it felt heady to read original letters of John Knox in the margins of which Queen Elizabeth I made her snarky retorts!

It was a surprise to everyone, especially myself when I got it done! So now that I have finished, as Pressfield says, I will always finish, even if it means a more mundane existence. The Overland Park Library is fairly boring in comparison.

I have three unfinished projects to tackle this week. I think I will surprise myself and finish them–or go postal myself!

#Trust30 Prompt: These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Is fear holding you back from living your fullest life and being truly self expressed? Put yourself in the shoes of the you who’s already lived your dream and write out the answers to the following:
Is the insecurity you’re defending worth the dream you’ll never realize? or the love you’ll never venture? or the joy you’ll never feel?

I have had a difficult time with this prompt because it seems so similar to previous prompts in the series. It makes me wonder how Domino Project made these assignments to the guest authors. Like, did they write them all and say, “Come up with something from ‘Self-Reliance’ and send it to us”? Then perhaps they threw all the slips of papers with prompts in a hat and are drawing them out one by one?

Well I don’t know how they are coming up with the juxtaposition of prompts, but I feel like I faced this kind of fear when I did my dissertation. I had felt like the oldest extant Ph.D. student in the country and it was time to be finished. I was 99.9% of the way finished but couldn’t pull the trigger. I couldn’t slap on the concluding chapter and submit the thing. The fear was of what would happen once I was actually finished rather than “in process.” Finally, I tasered the inner perfectionist and let the chips fall where they finally fell. And, well, after a dissertation defense in which I perspired about fifty gallons of water I became doctor.

This seems to be a recurring theme in my life in connection with many projects. As I think back on the unfinished aspects of my life I wonder how many of them were 99 percent finished when I abandoned them? I like what Pressfield says about what we should do when we reach the frontier of our almost finished projects and begin to be fended off by fear of a world where we have completed our little work: “Just ship it!”

#Trust30 Prompt: Imitation is Suicide. Insist on yourself; never imitate. – Ralph Waldo Emerson. Write down in which areas of your life you have to overcome these suicidal tendencies of imitation, and how you can transform them into a newborn you – one that doesn’t hide its uniqueness, but thrives on it. There is a “divine idea which each of us represents” – which is yours?

Many of my more serious-minded friends ask why I spend so much time twittering, facebooking, and blogging. Their argument is that this activity is a profound waste of time with no apparent object. There is much in what they say. Unless one’s friends are for the most part immersed in the same social networking circles, all messages sent are a ping without a pong. Then there are friends who are lurkers: they scan but make no comment. The only way to entice a lurker to participate in the dialogue is to post a picture of a baby human or domesticated animal, or to relate a mundane life event with a slapstick or scatological flavor. I set a personal record for Facebook comments when I confessed that I was having a bad morning because I dropped my toothbrush and razor into the toilet.

Receiving these interactions did not encourage me. I felt that I was not being offered deep relationship, but a surface nod because I touched a place of safe commonality. My hope was that this was a starting point for dialogue, but alas, these Facebook friends apparently had no aspirations for our relationship beyond the tub-sink-commode triangle.

But consider the potential of this nascent media! Like Diogenes I cannot help but carry my lantern through the productions of amazing technology looking, not just for an honest man, but for any sign of intelligent life that might be willing to discuss mostly noble, and a few less-than-noble, thoughts. Now others express strong opinions based on irrational self-interest (and of course I do as well, but the hope for any growing human is to root these out without becoming dispassionate about truth and beauty), but I am hoping for powerful thinking based on truth, reason, and evidence. I don’t hear the word truth used much anymore. I suspect it is because it does not pair well with irrational self-interest.

I hope you hear a passionate lament in all of this. Diogenes has not given up.

Here is the point related to Emerson’s thoughts on imitation of suicide, or compromising whoness–our values and gifts–to kill the Muse and Genius for a mess of pottage. The “red stuff” for which one would sell one’s soul in this case is shallow connection as better than no connection at all. I have friends who urge me to adopt strategies of people whose videos have gone viral or whose blogs attract millions of eyeballs. I wish I could say that out of some conviction I have always refused this advice as imitation of another rather than trusting myself. I am willing to try an ethical means to accelerate my lantern-walk. What I will not do is use a popular or innocuous message to garner dittos: “just be yourself,” “trust your [frankly distended narcissistic] gut,” “follow your bliss,” and so on. I am being myself right now, but it is probably offensive to most. I trust my gut when I have learned self-control, and I don’t even use the word “bliss” in normal conversation.

I don’t tweet and blog to be heard at any cost, and I won’t imitate the more successful types who are heard. Like Jacob, I am a mess, but I refuse to become Esau. Like Menno, I will not cease to use whatever means are available to the truth. Like Diogenes I will be content to carry my lamp in a dark place. Will you join me here?