What Do You Have To Say?
So I was driving home after staying at my sister’s place for the weekend. I stuffed the trunk with my stuff, and as I was on the highway I noticed there was a notice on my dashboard saying that my trunk was open. The problem was that I was in a construction zone and there was no place on the side of the road to stop my car. And besides, who wants to stop their car on the highway anyways?
So I’m talking to my friend on the phone while this is happening and I take an exit and she tells me that the Hooters parking lot is the first stop off the exit. We laughed about that, and I said, I have to write about that.
But instead of Hooters, I ended up going into a random parking lot of a diner that was actually the first stop off of the exit. I laughed with my friend about the fact that I almost purposely went to the Hooters parking lot so I could write a funny story about it.
Sometimes, usually, people who are not writers, think that writers have to have lived an exciting life in order to write. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Most of writing is about a person’s inner life. Nothing at all has to happen. Emily Dickenson did not have an exciting life, but her poetry is extremely exciting. It is about her observation of regular life.
I mean I have to admit, it helps every now and then that interesting things and interesting people have come into my life so I can write about them. But the best writing I do I find, comes from my own mind. My observations of literally anything. The human condition itself.
That is what we are after in writing, a representation of the human condition. And everyone, whether you have an exciting life or not, is witnessing the human condition. You could literally be locked in a jail cell in solitary confinement and have loads to write about.
In fact, I have thought about the worst thing that could happen to me, which would be going to jail for something I did not do. I have thought that what I would do with that time is just write and write. Because they can take everything away from you, but they can’t take away your mind.
All art, in fact, is a mirror of humanity. It is showing ourselves to ourselves. We are the men and women in that mirror. Did you ever see the movie, Room? It’s a story about a woman who is captured and kept in a shed behind a man’s house and she has his baby. This little boy has never stepped outside into the real world, he thinks the people on T.V. are living in a fantasy world. He has never met anyone besides his mother.
Even in that room, he has a story to tell.
We all have a story. Some of us tell it through writing, painting, music, and even engineering. The way we express ourselves is manifold, but we are all doing it, in everything we do. Everything we think, say or do is an expression of our self. What is interesting to me is that every single person on this planet has a different story. Everyone has something unique to say.
How are you telling your story? What is it that you have to say?
I wonder sometimes if I have anything interesting left to think or say. A lot of what I write is a reflection on my life. I worry sometimes that I will run out of things to write about, but I never worry that I will run out of things to think about. Think about that. We are always thinking.
In meditation I try to stop thinking, it is one of the hardest things to do in life. We are thinking creatures, creatures of thought. I feel like the only time I’m not really thinking is when I’m on Facebook, it feels like that sucks all the creative thought out of me.
Even now, I’m just looking out the window, thinking. I’m thinking about thinking. One of the things that makes me upset about my life is that I have not traveled enough. I want to travel the world. However, until I do, there is enough going on right here right now for me to uncover.
I worked with a kid the other day who brought a gun to school, mind you, it was not loaded. But that kid is one of my smartest kids and the absolutely most respectful student that I teach. I look at him and wonder what moved him to bring that gun to school. Was someone bullying him? Was he trying to look like a bad cool guy? Or was he just not thinking.
Sometimes we do things without thinking, even though most of the time we are thinking. Like driving for instance. I can get from point A to point B without even noticing that I’m driving, I have such a rich inner world going on that I’m paying attention to that.
But mindfulness teaches us to get out of our heads all the time. Thinking about the past and future can be counterproductive in the present, sometimes you miss what’s happening right in front of you when you are off thinking about imaginary things. The past and the future is imaginary, there is only the present.
In this present moment, I’m thinking about the sun creeping into the sky this morning. I’m thinking about the brilliant hour long walk I took outside, it was so much better than using a treadmill. There is nothing like fresh air and nature.
I saw two birds like flying into each other, they were playing some kind of game. It was so interesting. Life does not have to be grand and exotic to be interesting. If you think you have nothing to write about or sing about or paint, you are wrong. You have the world, it’s right in front of you. There is a line in a famous poem, the name is escaping right now, but it talks about seeing infinity in a grain of sand.
That’s where infinity is, in a piece of dirt. It’s all right here, plain before our eyes. The miracle of life is so fascinating. I don’t have to go to Egypt and Thailand to understand the complexities of the world. I would like to, but I still have something to say.
So do you.
nina