Buddhism teaches that all things change, and that suffering is inherent to life.
As humans we add to this suffering, or rather amplify it, by trying to hold onto the narrative line that we have fed ourselves.
We resist the reality of change the various truths evidenced by its existence.
The story or narrative line to which we cling so tightly is in many or most cases an untruth fed to us by our parents, and their friends and colleagues. The walls of silence we encounter from our peers during adolescence support these untruths.
No one wants to be perceived as vulnerable or weak. And yet we all struggle to remain in the race, keep our heads above the rip tides of life threatening to render us paralyzed with fear, hopelessness, apathy and cynicism.
The teenage years for many of us felt like an encroaching pit of hell.
We knew our truth. The aches and pains of growing up, our coming of age in the face of a fast approaching adulthood was far too real.
While welcoming some of the changes it wrought, we, like our peers, resisted others. Many of us denied the existence of life’s ever-present challenges, while others of us wore our suffering on our sleeves. This is the path of many writers, what set us apart, and made us outsiders.
Like most adults and the ones that they would become, our fellow teenage peers who were perhaps members of the in-crowd, appeared to have perfected their experience of living.
They did the things characteristic of the so-called normal American teenager as if unaffected by the age-old angst of being alive, and that has for eons wearied the souls of all who have walked upon this earth, our home.
Yet this is but one part of the story, one aspect of the journey. A larger, more potent aspect remains to be told.
And we are the ones to tell it, if we are truly the writers we claim.
So much of writing involves close observance of life’s intricacies and conflicts, the paradoxes that interweave our lives, the oxymorons that not unlike Buddhist koans, endow life and living with substance.
Like all great stories, life is an immensely beautiful and frightening experience. The best writers know this and dig in, dive deeper, and through their stories reflect the yearnings, hope, grace and redemption that endow life with meaning.
What is the most moving novel or story you’ve ever read and why?
What message do you strive to deliver in your stories and novels?