When I\u2019m at home, I love to read a\u00a0good book, usually one of the current bestsellers. When I drive, I love to listen\u00a0to books on Audible, usually one of the classics. I was on my way to the\u00a0grocery store a couple of weeks ago, listening to an Audible recording of \u201cTo\u00a0the Lighthouse\u201d by Virginia Wolff, and I had a surprising revelation.<\/p>\n
A 20th Century British writer, Virginia Wolff was one of our most important modernist authors, a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness to tell a story. But to be honest, although she wrote brilliantly, I found her book difficult to follow. It was dense and my attention kept wandering. I thought I ought to be riveted and I was annoyed with myself that I kept losing the plot and rewinding \u2013 when I suddenly understood that for my purposes, the story line didn’t matter. Neither did her turns of phrase. I didn\u2019t need to rewind to hear it again. It was okay if I missed pieces of the narrative and I didn\u2019t always know what was going on. What mattered was the way she enticed me to drop into the rhythm of her words and become a part of her inner experience. To feel what she felt. To learn what she was learning. To take a ride on the parts of her story that spoke to my soul.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
As I continued to listen, I was\u00a0stunned that after numerous bestsellers and teaching for decades, I had missed\u00a0an entire level of my own writing. When I got home, I pulled up a story of one\u00a0of my ghostwriting jobs and I read it through. Although I had edited it over
and over, large gaps were apparent where I could\u2019ve dug deeper. It became\u00a0painfully obvious to me and I felt inadequate. How had I missed the opportunity\u00a0to draw my readers in, even though no one would ever read it because I had\u00a0signed an NDA? Was I a good writer or was I kidding myself?<\/p>\n
My self- judgments passed quickly\u00a0and I got exited about making my piece better. My yearning to reach that new level\u00a0of communication was pure, not at all self-serving, because I’d chosen a\u00a0piece that I could never share with anyone. Redoing it was not about showing it
to anyone. It was about practicing my craft just like I did when I was in the\u00a0ballet. Every morning we all stood at the barre and performed the same\u00a0exercises to warm up and get ready to rehearse. And the headliners in the\u00a0company were at the barre just like I was, trying to improve every day. We were\u00a0all determined to keep getting better, no matter how accomplished we already were\u00a0and we wanted to going deep to find our strength and personal interpretation of\u00a0the steps we were doing. \u00a0<\/p>\n
In my writing classes, we write for\u00a0forty-five minutes and before we read out loud, someone often says, \u201cI\u2019m\u00a0writing about the same old thing. I hope it isn\u2019t boring.\u201d It isn\u2019t. When we\u00a0write for healing which is what my classes are all about, we keep on reviewing something
difficult that happened, removing layer after layer of trauma. Each attempt\u00a0gives us back pieces of ourselves. The same thing happens in therapy. The safer\u00a0we feel, the more we dig in and we only stop investigating something when we\u00a0find some peace in our hearts and our souls feel lighter. It might take months\u00a0or years to get to the core of things and reap the rewards of being so courageous.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not suggesting you try to be\u00a0perfect. We all know that\u2019s impossible. I\u2019m not talking about falsely\u00a0sweetening your life story so you look better to other people. Removing layers\u00a0of pain can be a challenging and personal experience, but when we tell the truth and find the courage to go dig in and be more authentic, we heal and so
do other people.<\/p>\n
Some painters have a system of\u00a0over-painting the final levels of their piece and they never really finish\u00a0until they decide they’re done. Kathryn Stockett who wrote \u201cThe Help,\u201d a\u00a0bestselling novel that became a blockbuster movie, kept writing and rewriting\u00a0until it was so much better, she finally got a book deal from the sixty-first
agent she tried. The point here is finding the will to keep making things\u00a0better and going deeper, to not be satisfied until you know you\u2019ve done the\u00a0best that you can.<\/p>\n
Whatever you practice in this life\u00a0\u2013 meditation, golf, baking, decorating, teaching, running, and a thousand other\u00a0things \u2013 if you\u2019re diligent and keep searching for ways to go deeper and do
better, it will never get boring. The way to accomplish this may come to you in\u00a0unexpected ways like the revelation I had. Or it may come with a deliberate\u00a0effort to make the words on the page sing, to breathe life into a sculpture, to\u00a0add a color to a painting that dazzles the viewer, or to write songs that get\u00a0stuck in people\u2019s heads.<\/p>\n
The late Vietnamese Buddhist, Thich\u00a0Nhat Hanh said, \u201cEnlightenment, peace and joy will not be granted by someone
else. The well is within us, and if we dig deeper into the present moment, the\u00a0water will spring forth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I\u2019m at home, I love to read a\u00a0good book, usually one of the current bestsellers. When I drive, I love to listen\u00a0to books on Audible, usually one of the classics. I was on my way to the\u00a0grocery store a couple of weeks ago, listening to an Audible recording of \u201cTo\u00a0the Lighthouse\u201d by Virginia Wolff, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2392,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391\/revisions\/2392"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}