Public policy, social issues, gender politics, religion, civitas, and other taboo topics fall under the hammer of Shava's iconoclasmic force of natural philosophy.
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On writing
Monday, March 03, 2003
11:09 PM
At 09:06 PM 3/3/2003, a new friend wrote:
Shava:
Why do I hear the voice of John Ruskin? And perhaps
Eric Hoffer? Heavy reading there; I'll get back to
you in a couple of days. - N
And you can't even see me blush on the other end of all this ether...;)
I'm not much used to people comparing me to such luminaries! I am flattered and a bit abashed. My father was really fond of Hoffer, and I became familiar with Ruskin through my love of the pre-raphaelites (in my youth, my hair looked something like Persephone's). I imagine as we speak of the renaissance man, Hoffer was the Victorian man.
When I was a ten year old, a woman came to dinner, to visit my father. He was the Unitarian Universalist minister in Montpelier. Montpelier is the capital of Vermont but only about 8,000 people.
We'd recently moved there and this woman -- I think she might have been the chair of the church board -- was obviously someone my parents wanted to impress. My father was late with some church business, and my mother was busy in the kitchen, so this woman was set with me to entertain her in the living room.
I remember her smiling at me and asking me, formulaically, "So, what do you want to be when you grow up?"
"When I grow up, I will be a renaissance woman." I replied.
At that age, I didn't understand why we continued to sit on the couch in silence. I could tell that she was suddenly uncomfortable with me, but at that age, I wasn't much adept at starting smalltalk. My reaction to her silence was to respect it with my own.
Today, I think she was actually frightened at my intensity, and the certainty with which I answered. All through dinner, she behaved as though I were not even at the table.
Some days, I find myself with the same attitude toward myself as that woman had. What in the world am I thinking, to be writing at all? Who am I to believe that I have anything to say? What am I -- except compelled to write?
I have two quotes above my writing desk. One is the Marianne Williamson bit quoted by Mandela at his inauguration:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
The other is Hoffer's, a probably less well-known affirmation:
There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life. Moreover, when we have an alibi for not writing a book, painting a picture, and so on, we have an alibi for not writing the greatest book and not painting the greatest picture. Small wonder that the effort expended and the punishment endured in obtaining a good alibi often exceed the effort and grief requisite for the attainment of a most marked achievement.
As a single mother, as a single mother with an executive job, as a single mother executive with health problems, as... Well, the alibis come easy. The lack of confidence in my writing sometimes makes me brittle and arrogant and blustery.
But I really do try to only remember that if the message I have to communicate seems larger than me, and I don't have to be large enough to carry it, but only to describe it.
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