Like an old man watching children at play, we need to see through our own seriousness. No matter how seriously the children go about their games, the old man is amused and never for a moment takes them to be real. We can watch our own thoughts and emotions in the same way. Without taking them so seriously, we can see them as children at play and give them lots of space.
–Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
(excerpted from–Wisdom for Difficult, Times, Shambhala Sun Magazine/May 2009, p. 41)
It is helpful not to take ourselves too seriously, inject a bit a humor into the things about our lives and our humanness that so frustrates us. The same attitude helps tremendously with writing.
So easily we take the stories we write, our dedication and commitment to crafting them as our sole purpose for living.
That writing, and doing it well requires much time and discipline renders us subject to this oversimplification of the meaning of our existence.
But to live is to do more than simply exist.
And so with our stories, and the sacrament we perform in creating them, we must remember that we write not for the sake of writing, nor because we can
Rather, I suspect, we weave stories and work to perfect them because some human being touched us, offered hope when all we were attempting seemed certain to fail. The incident perhaps lies tucked behind the stories we strive so vigorously to revise and edit for publication, we unable to recall or acknowledge it.
Yet if we stop and consider all they we have written hope to tell, some human being, who truly lives or has lived in human form, gave us the impetus for our dearest and most profound and moving characters.
This person may have been an aunt, an uncle, a grandmother or sister, or simply a friend or unnamed individual who in stepping out of seemingly nowhere provided a bit of salvation mixed with grace.
The stories we craft lie rooted in the human experiences we have undergone. And those most definitely were filled with people.
Who is the most interesting character you have created or that arose in your imagination?
What life experience has permanently shaped your take on life?