On Faith

Have you ever thought: Maybe my over-dependence on other people is because I lack a connection with something bigger? Maybe my fears, in part, have to do with not having a sense of security in the overall goodness of the world?

It's hard to talk about God. It's hard to decide even what to name that something that is bigger than us. Naming it defines our relationship. 


Do we call this force by a name? Do we think of it as simply consciousness? 

And how do we grapple with our hundred different thoughts of what God has meant to us in the past as well as how these ideas have changed. As I have practiced writing in the last few months, I have become more aware of the parts of my life that call out their absence. I don't have any spiritual practice, and I pray very little. If you were to ask me though, I could tell you what I believe.

It's founded in my experience of a few different moments in my life. For brief instants, I touched that thin space between life and death. I knew, with a surety that defies reason, that I was part of something bigger. 

I knew that when we die, only the form disappears. The essence remains intact, it continues. But even though I have touched this place, I have not been able to live this experience in a way that frees me. It has ended up becoming a frozen intellectual thought. 

As I have gone through life, I have picked up other debris. Like you, I have had shocks to my system. When something unfair has happened, I have asked, like many others: Why would God allow this? Is there really a God?

And so, I have developed a deep ambivalence, and my relationship with God is one in which I have stopped talking, and stopped listening. Maybe you are in a similar place. You have a faith that you have carried through your life. You also have doubts that lock you in place.

All we can do when we realize this is start walking again in the direction of our questions. And resolve the faulty beliefs that might have stopped us in our tracks. Maybe we have stopped our search because we don't have the internal permission to pray in our own way. 

Maybe we have turned away from the meaninglessness behind rituals, but haven't actually turned towards something. We have a right to synthesize our own practice. If our creativity helps us encounter ourselves, and encounter sacredness, then that's one form of prayer. 

Service is another. We don't need to necessarily follow conventions, or mindlessly accept that there is a “right” way and that if this way doesn't resonate with us, we are left with nothing.

It is radical for me to think that I could have let such flimsy reasons come in the way of such an important relationship. But the real reason, of course, is the hurt and anger that we all carry. We don't know what will happen when we start relating, start asking again. 

There was a time when we thought that we would crumble if we asked, and did not get an answer. That self that was hurt needs compassion. Maybe today, we are a little bit stronger, and can let ourselves fumble in the dark. 

We can risk asking. We can shake lose our frozen, numb places and start on what really is the ultimate quest that gives meaning to our lives.

Why write?

Writing is nebulous. Sometimes, I think of it as an energy that grows or shrinks as I pay more or less attention to it. Sometimes, it feels like a raw nerve that twitches when I touch it. 

It electrifies my life. And sometimes, it slips out of my hand and falls into the outer world. I find myself losing the connection, trying to join again with it, trying to solidify this relationship.

If you are a writer, you might be constantly looking for answers to questions: Why do I write? Why do I want to write? Who do I write for? Sometimes, like me, you might be using these questions as excuses to stop yourself from writing. You might also think that knowing the answers will help you.

I have been grasping at these questions. They matter to me because they clarify what I am trying to do. And I am learning that like a child, knowing the answer, knowing the reason helps me do the work. I can't will myself to do it. I can't jump into it and do it. 

I have a cautious nature, and maybe the reason I have not been moving forward is because I have been expecting myself to imitate what I think strong, adventurous people do. While the truth is that I need these answers. 

I need to gently pull myself forward, instead of getting into a battle of wills against myself. Yesterday, I opened Natalie Goldberg's Thunder and Lightning, and came happily to an essay called “But who is listening?” I had read it before, but I felt closer to the words. 

Natalie says: “I never wanted to write to my grandmother and grandfather. They were my audience my whole childhood, not a beat off. I spoke in the moment and they listened. No gap. Maybe it's the gap, the feeling that someone isn't listening, doesn't get it, has half heard us, that compels us to write and explain. That's why we turn around and speak to our past, as if others can hear us now, as if we can finally hear ourselves and catch our fleeting lives.”

That is one reason for writing. This need to bridge the gap. This need to be heard and mirrored back, hopefully by someone, somewhere who we don't know, but who knows this precious part of us. There are other reasons. 

Sometimes, when I am writing, I feel like I am shaping clay, and while I am attempting to make something, this something is also changing me, bringing me into relief. There is also this reductive part of me that wants to arrive at a linear conclusion. That's uncomfortable with spontaneous movement, that hangs behind the rock and never wants to come out. It always want to play safe. 

I used to read Natalie's books and feel myself drawing back, trying to protect myself, unseated by the twists and turns of her mind. Now, I am more comfortable with the ride. I am a shade more comfortable with uncertainty. 

I like this feeling, this sense of free-falling and yet, somehow, landing on my feet. I can't get up the nerve to do it often, but doing it, when I can let myself, is freeing. I have always been looking for freedom.

As I work to stretch my relationship with writing, to get out of the little boxes that I cage myself in, I see the ways in which I limit myself. I have no trust. I am always trying to think about the future. 

One part of me – the hack – wants to strategize and do the least amount of work. It's always on the lookout for what will legitimize me as a writer. The other part pulls back from these machinations, it's turned off by them, but doesn't quite have the faith to go it alone, to walk in the darkness. Screaming in their midst is the child who feels the pain of all the unfolding, the pain of the growth. It doesn't want to feel. It just wants to sit there and dream.

It's no wonder that we can lock ourselves in one place.

Today, I think the child in me needs a little bribing. It's sore, and I don't treat it well. I try to push it. It pulls back. 

Where is the fun in all this, it asks? Where are the trees growing upside down? The enchanted forest with streams that run into dragon mouths? Why is everything so plain? Where is the enchantment?

Too much reality is not good for me. Delusion is also not good. It has drowned me in the past, taken me away from myself. But this reality – of clip-clopping along, of thinking that everything worldly is good and grounded – this isn't good either. 

I need my reality tempered with magic. I need it tempered with hope. I need my writing to cook these things up, in a dancing pot. I want a magic potion that will wake me up and make me dance, instead of plodding along like a mule.

All words are not made equal. Maybe right now the words that you need, the words that will nourish you, are words you will form into a story, throw with abandon into the wind. At another time, maybe the words you need are the words that face things head on. Maybe you will write an essay then, or an article.

What are the words that you need today? Are you writing to connect? Or to dissolve? Do you want to play? Or be serious? Which part of you is coming forth? 

Why are you writing today? 

Listen to this post!

Creativity and Risk

I haven't written for what feels like long centuries. It's actually been a few weeks, interspersed with a visit by family from India and going out of town for my anniversary celebration. 

And I have been itching to come back and write again. But when I've sat down to form words, my mind feels clamped shut. Today, my hands are heavy on the keyboard and I want to get away. Writing feels painful.

Writing also brings clarity, it brings all this stuff that we've stuffed down bobbing up to the surface. I want to push it away, make a ball of it and throw it out of the window but it keeps bouncing right back. Writing calls out. Are you willing to feel? Do you want to? Or not?

Many times, I don't. I don't want to deal with this scum rising to the top.

Before I went on my holiday, I'd been reading Seth Godin's The Icarus Deception. I pick it up again, and shuffle through the pages to find my place. What Godin has been saying made sense. 

Among other things, he talks about how it's no longer safe to just play safe in today's world. How clinging to the safety of what we've always known will destroy us because the rules are already changing. 

And since he talks about the shift to a connection economy that rewards risk-takers, he also talks about the supreme risk-taker of all – the artist. And the artist is not just the painter or the musician, but anyone doing anything new and risky and bringing it out into the world.

What he says is true. As we all know, many walls have been falling for the last couple of decades. Today, if you want to be a musician or an entrepreneur or a writer, you don't have to wait for the traditional gatekeepers to give you permission. You can start. 

You can begin where you are and get your work out there in the world. But, as Godin quotes Adrienne Rich, “The door itself makes no promises. It is only a door.” Beyond that door, lies our opportunity to connect, our possibilities. But nothing is guaranteed.

We will have to dig deeper into our work, and come up with something that will be of value to the world. Then, we will offer it. And if we haven't been able to create something worthwhile, we will have to go back and dig deeper and make something better. 

Godin calls this emotional labor. I understand what he means, as I am sure does any artist who is working on bringing forth their ideas into the world. It takes courage to step through a door that has been opened to us. It takes emotional work. 

We don't know the rules because it's a new world. We have to turn inside to negotiate the twists and turns. We've not been taught how to risk, and we learn only by doing it.

When I started this blog last year, I was scared of even sharing it on Facebook. What would people say? What would they think of what I'd written? And yet, I knew that I needed to start sharing it in some way if I didn't want my words to just float in the ether, crumbling because they couldn't reach anyone.

The kind of questions I wrestled with included egoistic ones like: Wasn't blogging a form of bastardized writing? Was it the correct, valid way? 

And then I fortunately thought, holding on to the belief that I needed to present myself in a certain way as a writer was what had held me back from being one all this time. Is my audience not an audience because it is not reading my book ? Is it a lesser audience? 

I don't think so.

This blog has been the beginning of several things for me. It started me on my real writing journey. Because of it, I have sent out other work into the world. And some of that work has started finding a home. I have connected with so many people, and found so many voices saying “Me too.”

And what has happened through this claiming, through this saying “I write” out loud to the world, through sharing my voice is that what I believe is out. It is solidified in my writing. 

It's a little risk my heart took, and it's a little risk that has paid off. Sharing my work instead of keeping it in helped it grow, so other people could see it as well. And that helped solidify my identity as a writer. If you are an artiste of any kind, you have probably asked yourself: Am I really a painter? Am I really an actor? There is no easy answer because who can say that but yourself? There's no way to quantify it. 

And so, we can get lost in these murky questions of identity without ever taking a concrete step. The truth is that I let go of waiting for permission and I started giving myself permission to go out into the world. When I did that and gave form to my ideas, other people saw that and acknowledged it. 

They saw me as a writer, and their seeing me as one, in turn, nourished that identity. If nothing else, that is one practical reason to start sharing what you make.

In his book, Godin says that art is personal, untested and intended to connect. He also says that art is “an interaction with a recipient, a gift given and a gift received.” If it doesn't ship, he says, it's not art. 

That's an interesting point to consider. Why do we make art ? Isn't it to expand who we are, to attempt something that nudges us to become bigger? As artists, we have to keep asking: Do I have the courage to share what I believe? Art is, in the end, a statement. Of who we are, of where we are going. If we keep our work in, we are stopping short of making that statement. 

We are not risking, and so, we are not becoming artistes.

If you are someone who writes or paints or sings, maybe it is time to share what you think with the world. Take that risk, and claim your art.  

On Self-esteem

“Children don't belong to us. They are little strangers who arrive in our lives and give us the pleasure and duty of caring for them – but we don't own them. We help them become who they are.” Gloria Steinem remembers her mother saying this in her wonderful Revolution from Within where she talks about self esteem, its roots and the many champions and detractors who shape how we think about ourselves and this world.

Steinem talks about how amazingly hard it must have been for her mother to break the pattern of her own upbringing and give her children this unconditional acceptance. For her mother, her children weren't “bad girls” if they did something she didn't like, nor were they “good” girls if they obeyed. 

They were loved regardless, and she constantly made an effort to distinguish between the child and her behavior.

Steinem talks about how this kind of unconditional love creates a “core” sense of self – a fundamental self esteem that no one and nothing can shake easily. But without having this experience of intrinsic value, “it's hard for children to survive the process of failing and trying again that precedes any accomplishment.”

Surviving the process of failing and trying again - isn't that what many of us are struggling with? It's not the vision that we lack, but the emotional wherewithal to make mistakes without falling apart. 

Most of us have had experiences in our life where our being was only accepted conditionally. We go on looking for external validation, not realizing that getting it won't solve our problems. What we are looking for is unconditional acceptance, a home that will shelter us when the world gets too much.  

As a woman who spent most of her 20s in a corporate job feeling lost and as if she couldn't breathe, I know what it means to not have the internal permission to risk and make mistakes. I also know that self esteem is something that we can nurture and build brick by brick through our own actions. 

But it doesn't last forever. Every day, it either grows or diminishes because of the risks we take or don't take. It's not something that we can have and be done with. And we all need to find our own champions, who can love us when our own self-love is in short supply, who can encourage us to start our journey of becoming more of who we are.

As I take more small steps in becoming who I am, I think of myself as a plant taking root. I think of the task for this season, and it is to take up space, make room for my own self to expand and grow. And as a woman from a culture where babies are almost expected and who is approaching her mid-30s, I think the real answer is that we all have our own season for doing things. 

I used to think that I am out of step when I didn't check the same major life transitions when others did. But checking things off isn't the point.

I am on my journey. I am a writer. I am an artiste.  

I am someone, with or without a child. I am someone with a creative youngster inside her, who is learning to parent that child and letting her become all that she is capable of being.