Month: September 2022

Is anybody out there? Does anyone read this? Is the writer of this blog casting words into an oblivious void? Here is a poem about loneliness and isolation, courtesy of yours truly:

Hardly movement much at all

Standing water in the sink

Imagined voices down the hall

Wasting energy to blink

A ponder after my old friends

Forehead lighted in a nook

Evermore our story ends

In every place I look

After this expression of creativity and personal feeling, it seems appropriate to do away with the formality, sustained through every blog post until this point, of avoiding first person pronouns; you and I are friendly enough now, I believe, to cast off such pretenses.

So what then is the business of this blog post? Is it only to bemoan the solitude of authorship, and shoehorn in a few of my verses? Yes, but not that only. You see, for practically the whole of my life, I was referred to as a “creative type”, and it served me well. It served me in that there were always glamorous stereotypes after which I could model myself; and I had a heading and direction as I pursued a career through college and beyond; but most importantly, it provided me with an emotional outlet.

I was so labeled because of my natural inclination to produce creative material; however, my parents, teachers and friends calling me “creative” reinforced this identity and instilled a desire to self-actualize it. This, in combination with my given propensities, resulted in a habit of creative production during the loneliest periods of my youth; I say, it saved me many times over. 

But what of all those “uncreative” types? Where could they turn in their lonely moments? During lunch, when I was alone, waxing poetic on the bench in the garden behind the high school library; where were they? Could a game of kickball reveal one’s soul to oneself?

If one is a very great lover of kickball, perhaps. But if over three decades of living has taught me anything, it is this: no person is “uncreative”. If there is a God, there is a Soul; and if there is a Soul, Art is our map to it. And there is art in all of us. 

Write, use paints, sing, make music. Show everyone or show no one. Art is a most wonderful way to know the world inside of yourself.

If your soul is full, you are always in good company; even when you’re alone.

Laziness

It is useful to one’s growth and development to be given, at the start of step six, a list of character defects. It is even more useful, at the conclusion of the same step, to have formulated a list of contrary actions to counteract them. 

Unfortunately, there is a hazardous force which divorces one from one’s ability to implement those actions. This force takes many names, ‘laziness’ being one; it is also called ‘willingness’ and sometimes ‘effort’.

The writer of this blog once considered laziness to be a misnomer; a misdiagnosis; it was, it made such beautiful sense, the outward appearance of paralytic anxiety. Indeed, anxiety can turn energy against itself, and render it apparently inert. But if we are honest in our self-examination, does this explanation account for our every idleness?

No, for the writer of this blog, at least, when it comes right down to it, it does not. No, in point of fact, there are instances in which one scours ‘l’intérieur’ for gusto and, having scoured it, simply finds none. 

Is it fair to assume then that tiredness, a lack of sleep, might account for what remains of our disinterest in rising from the couch and painting a landscape or feeding the homeless? In some cases, perhaps. Yet the energy to watch television and eat a sandwich does usually reveal itself. 

Truly, don’t we all know, at least transiently, what it is to simply lack the inclination to do what we ought? There are other contributing factors, to be sure; resentment, conflicting desires and a “hundred forms of fear”. But ultimately, we must face the fact that a lack of inspiration may be innate in us.  A lack of passion, like power, may be “our dilemma”.

What is the remedy? Drugs and alcohol worked wonders for a time, but the consequences, we found, were too severe. So instead we are told to “ask God for inspiration. An intuitive thought or a decision… What used to be the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind… Having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times… Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration.” Never forget, dear reader: at the other end of every decision you make is another human being. 

And if God exists, he loves people who love people who love people.