The Fallacy of Altruism

A lot of us were raised on a porridge of self eradication.  Ask not what your country can do for you.  Offer it up for the poor souls.  Other people have it worse off than you.  In other words, suck it up and shut up.  But what are you depriving the world of when you don’t allow yourself to be fully present in it?

Appalachian boreen.  I know, a bit early in the blog this week, but I’ve got a head cold, can’t concentrate and it’s a short cut to what I want to say.  Christmas was big shakes in my family of origin.  Presents all over the floor, decorations everywhere inside and out, cards, stockings, enough food to feed a small village.  So when El Punko, my son, was very young, I relished the lies and deception, the sneaking around and Christmas Day surprises. 

One Christmas morning when he’d grown old enough to think of me as a person, El Punko noticed there were no presents under the tree for me.  He cried.  You see, I was a single mother.  Probably the most important person in his life, and I’d forgotten her.  Or me, as it were. 

If your needs are never visible, you may teach your loved ones that the need doesn’t exist.  You may give them an inflated idea of how important their needs are.  Or you may instil in them a pressure to get it right for you. 

If you’re a writer, you’re denied the experience of receiving love fully.  So how can you write about the vulnerability that is love?  The vulnerability that wants to accept love but may be denied?  The vulnerability that wants to accept love and may actually get it.  And isn’t that the really scary thing?  To find someone who sees you.  How can you write about the fear of being loved, the fragility of love, if you don’t allow it to come out from under the bed and say, Boo!

Being visible in your life, gives you experiences that make you a more full individual.  The closer you come to reaching your potential, the better your life, the better the part of your life you share with others.  Ultimately, the better the gift of yourself. 

How Big is Your Brave?

Notice the guy in blue plaid.

Being a writer can make you feel the most universally unwanted person in the world.  When your friends get shortlisted and you don’t, or the writer of that crap play wins an award you deserved, when you start the morning with another email rejection that spells your name incorrectly, all you feel fit for is lying spread-eagled on the floor and having a good ol’ wail.  

Go ahead.  Give yourself fifteen seconds of despair.  We’re creatures of expression, after all.

 I once read an article that said the mental health of writers isn’t great.  We spend a lot of time by ourselves creating fantasies, without the intermittent positive response or even a pay cheque to keep us going.  We have to ignore the constant rejection, improve our craft without losing our voice, yet still be able to hear the truth about our work.  It takes a particularly fine sorting skill to achieve all that. 

Apparently the difference between us and other artistic media is that in addition to the isolated nature of the work, we don’t have a tangible product unless we’re published.  No song to hum to ourselves.  No still life to hang on the wall.  Just a ream of paper tucked in a cupboard or a file on our desktop.  We have to believe in the intangible while living in a materialistic society.  What do you suppose the end result of that’s going to be?  It doesn’t take a mental health professional to see creature-of-expression plus no-audience equals spread-eagled-wailing. 

Big deal, eh?  Every life has sorrow built into it.  That’s a fact, right?  Well I say, anyone who believes that life only gives what we can handle, that person isn’t really paying attention.  Sometimes life punches back too hard and changes who you are.  Sometimes that change isn’t for the better.  Sometimes it damages you in ways you’ll never recover from.  That’s not something any of us want to have happen.

Happiness isn’t a passive activity.  When you see the laser dot of ego destruction on your chest, get to work.  The first and easiest thing is to ‘reframe’.  In other words, don’t let your mind downslide into negative thought.  Your friend getting shortlisted or winning that award?  Not about you.  The inability for someone to spell your name right when they’re crushing your dreams?  That’s about them.  Don’t interpret the world as out to get you.  At the most, the world outside of our immediate circle is indifferent to us.

When you do get knocked down, promise yourself to get back up again.  Eventually.  In due time.  When the wailing is done.  Keep this promise to yourself.  Do Not Give Up.

Check out your social environment.  Do the people closest to you support your writing or do they invade your writing time, not show up to readings, ‘inadvertently’ shred your latest collection of poems?  Do you meet with other writers?  Do you attend literary events in your community?  Do other writers know you in the flesh or only on Twitter and Facebook?  If your social environment is failing you, rethink it.  You are doing one of the most challenging things in the arts world.  Social science confirms this.  You cannot do it if you don’t have a warm and loving nest.  

Now comes the hard part.  Know in the depths of your marrow that you have the right to be here.  You have the right to express yourself.  You deserve to be heard.  You contribute something to this world that no other person, writer or non-writer, contributes.  You are your contribution and this is the only time you have to offer it.  Right here.  Right now.

Okay, so now watch this Sara Bareilles music video, Brave.  While you’re watching it, pay attention to the guy in the blue plaid shirt.  That’s what you’re striving for.  An unreserved commitment to enjoying your own expression.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUQsqBqxoR4

Show me your brave.

You Are Enough

At a dinner party, a woman said she’d heard that I was writer.  Before I could answer, her husband laughed and said, ‘She wishes.’  Amazing, the number of scenarios, mostly illegal, that careen through your head in a situation like this. 

The man in question works for the NHS but he loves his garden.  I doubt that anyone says he wishes he were a real gardener.  Yet, if you direct youth theatre, you’re a youth worker.  If you lead a choir for the elderly, you’re a social worker.  If you write only for yourself, you’re deluded.  You think you have talent?  How embarrassing. 

Today when we took the Big Nosed dog for a walk, the post van was parked along the street, radio playing and the postie himself dancing as he went house to house.  Gotta love that Northern Soul, he said, and danced past us.  Fantastic!

Humans thirst for creativity, and we do it at will.  Dance, sing, crack jokes, draw pictures in the snow.  Creation both expresses and connects us.  In my trauma work, tapping the client’s creativity ignites the sense of a healed self in a way that seems nearly magical.  And anyone who’s done community theatre or sung in a choir has felt that connected-ness that comes from doing something wonderfully creative together.

The arts are powerful.  So tap into that power and stage a revolution inside yourself.  Find the creative you and dust her off.  Cook a meal.  Write a blog.  Recite your poem on open mic night.  Dance in the street.  If anybody laugh at you, remember that YOU ARE ENOUGH. 

I believe you can do it, so get cracking.  Let me know how you get on.