11-6-16

Everyone should write a book

That is not to say that everyone should publish a book. There was a time when I thought I should write a book of my own. Then, I thought about all the books that have been written and the books that are published every week and I became weak in my resolve to write. Who needs another book of memoirs or a second-rate novel?  I have written a journal for many years and many letters of some length and it has been a meaningful practice for me. In an age of short text messaging, I thought I was maintaining the ancient arts of communication by actually taking time to write with reflection. I think that is still the case for anyone who takes time to think about the written word and then writes. When I got to the point of worrying about what my writing had to offer the bigger world, I began to write less. I had lost some of my confidence that had me underpinning preservation of the ancient arts. The truth is that I had conflated publishing with writing.

It didn't take long for me to get back to writing because I couldn't not write. My journal writing arose out of a basic need to interact with the events of my life and the ideas in my head during a time of faltering personal resolve. It began in Philadelphia during the Vietnam War. I was a medical student at a time of great social turmoil and tensions. The undergraduate campus of the university was restless with demonstrations against the war and there were "actions" and confrontations every day. It was hard to concentrate on classwork and especially so as I had a very low draft number and stood a chance of being taken from a career path to feed the maw of an expanding beast. These details of life lived then were examples in specificity and not in kind with the tensions and contradictions that occur to all of us over the course of a lifetime. We weigh the burdens of privilege with the gifts of commonly shared experiences. We are faced with financial worries and at the same time know that money is a tool only and not the key to happiness. We find ourselves conflicted in many many ways and often push into our subconscious what is too difficult to cipher. We actually postpone and ignore what continues to fester.

I got into the habit of opening my life to my journal writing during those early times of turmoil. It was a way for me to record and explore my pains as well as my joys. It was truly cathartic. I was often able to wash off the sludge of dread from something worth saving and polishing. This process of looking deeply and cleansing proceeds today. It has become especially important for me as I have aged. Age drags one into a phase of life that is barely perceptible when one is living through the 20's, 30's, 40's, and 50's. It isn't until one turns around and discovers all the children gone from the house and one's career at an end that it becomes a solid reality. We know that we age every day but we don't "feel" old until mid-life has moved behind us into the past. Writing inevitably gets us in touch with this feeling of being someone who is experiencing a life moving from one present moment to the next. Writing slows us down in our lives and asks us to look, to notice where we are in the ever-changing landscape of what we are experiencing. In the aging process, it is an aid in understanding death's encroaching presence in life.

Writing exposes us to ourselves. It makes us curious about who we are on a regular basis. Who we are is one of the most complicated and fraught questions we can ask ourselves. "Who am I?" "What am I here for?" "How shall I live my life?" These are the questions that arise for us in our writing. One could think of them as the pivotal questions in everything written. They are the questions we address directly or indirectly in all formats. Name any category of writing and those questions will be looking at you or lurking within the structures of the writing. Your own writing will emerge from them. Others' writing will challenge you to address them in what they have written. All writing is about the human experience, whether draped in fictional dress, philosophical pomp, or historical fires still burning. We know ourselves and others by the writing we do and the writing we read.

It has never been enough for me to just write and walk away. It has been important for me to digest the experiences of loss, sorrows, and delight to find the light for the path ahead. It is in writing that I have found the resolve to attempt what I cowered from or to see that my cowering has a useful reality for me. It is in writing that my most frightful demons have lost some of their power. It is in writing that I am challenged to find new words for emotions and it is in writing that my fingers untwist and my brain becomes less tangled. I find new ways to appreciate how embodied I am in my own life. I find connections and overlapping spheres of shared energy. I become aware that I do not stand alone but share vulnerabilities and difficulties with a larger community. Writing helps us feel less alone in a world all too fragmented and disconnected.

My journal writing has gone on for many decades now but I still find myself saying "I should write a book." The noble effort of writing a book consolidates one's accumulated experiences and insights. It synthesizes and concentrates one's mental life on a deeper task of understanding and being understood. I believe all writing is autobiographical in the way the writer picks the subject, the actors, the actors' names, the circumstances of architecture and landscape, and the timeline of action. The elements of a work might not be the same as the writer's life, but they are products of his/her mental life. It is the exploration of the mental life that brings a work to life. How does the work reflect the mind of the writer and how do we reflect the work in our lives? The shared experience of writer and reader grows into a larger community of like-minded souls. Isn't this why we write? Isn't it to explore our own humanity and see how it synchronizes with that of every soul on the planet? Isn't it to find the universal in personal experience? Isn't it to feel less alone and isolated in a universe of cold limitlessness?

Everyone should write a book. Or, maybe, just a journal entry when life's puzzles are too puzzling.