You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire\u00a0universe, deserve your love and affection.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 – – The Buddha<\/p>\n
A woman was in a forest, gathering herbs, when she heard a
magical sound. It was more beautiful than the calls of songbirds and she\u00a0followed the music until she reached a clearing. A group of people were sitting\u00a0in a circle. In the center sat a young man in a simple tunic and sandals, his\u00a0eyes closed, playing a wooden flute.<\/p>\n
The woman joined the group, sat on the earth and listened. It\u00a0was captivating. When the song was finished, the flutist opened his eyes and\u00a0looked out at the people surrounding him. They clapped and cheered. He smiled at\u00a0the woman. \u201cYou\u2019re a newcomer here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, I am,\u201d she said. \u201cI have a question. Your music is\u00a0enchanting. Where do you get your inspiration?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI play for these people sitting here. When they like what I\u00a0play, I feel happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut who taught you to play?\u201d<\/p>\n
Sadness filled his eyes. \u201cIf you stay here until I finish my
next song, I\u2019ll answer your question.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
When he was through and the people dispersed, he tucked his
flute into a carrier, slung it across his chest and gestured for the woman to\u00a0follow him. He led her deep into the forest where they walked along a riverbank \u00a0and climbed a steep hill. When they reached the top, they stopped beside a\u00a0stony path to a meadow with vibrant wildflowers. The flutist pointed to a\u00a0solitary figure sitting in the tall grass, holding a flute. As this man began\u00a0to play, the woman felt her chest expand. Tears flooded her eyes and she cried\u00a0for life, for love and for this magnificent expression of beauty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When the song was over, she whispered to her guide, \u201cIs he\u00a0your teacher? His music is the voice of the angels. How does he do it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI look to other people for approval,\u201d he said. \u201cMy teacher\u00a0plays only for himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Craving someone else\u2019s approval is a sticky web that affects\u00a0the quality of your work. The flutist played beautifully, but his source was
outside of himself. He knew he could do better, but he was unwilling to rise\u00a0above his need for approval.<\/p>\n
I was in a workshop when the facilitator said, \u201cWe fall in\u00a0love and we wait for someone else to say, \u2018I love you.\u2019 We place great\u00a0importance on it and evaluate our relationships with that in mind. But once we
hear it, we don\u2019t really believe what they\u2019re saying because we need to hear it\u00a0again and again. The only love that completely satisfies us is what we have for\u00a0ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you want to find beauty in the world and express it to\u00a0other people, first you have to delight yourself. If you want somone to love\u00a0what you did, you have to love it yourself. During the eighties, I took a dozen\u00a0trips to the Philippines to research the faith healers. I had extraordinary experiences\u00a0and after the third trip, I wanted to write a book about it. I started by\u00a0explaining what faith healing was, who performed it and where, and I offered\u00a0some details about when it started and how effective it was. I felt like I\u2019d\u00a0done a great job until I read it back. By page two, I was bored. My book read\u00a0like an academic text and I sounded like a know-it-all who thought I knew more\u00a0than anyone else.<\/p>\n
I tossed it and started over. I wrote about what it was like\u00a0to be in the Philippines, how it looked and how it smelled. How much I loved the
people. The healing mode I was studying was controversial, so I told the truth\u00a0about how my skepticism turned into wonder. As I wrote, I experienced all the\u00a0emotions that had moved me and when I read it back, I liked what I had done. I\u00a0found it honest and interesting. It touched my heart. If it moved other people,\u00a0fine. If it didn\u2019t, it was still fine because I had satisfied myself.<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s something you want to do but you\u2019re afraid no one\u00a0else will like it, do it for yourself. You\u2019re important enough. Last weekend I
went to see a couple of girlfriends and read them a piece I had written. It was\u00a0an intimate experience for all of us. Granted, it\u2019s a thrill to get a book deal,\u00a0but at this point in my life, it\u2019s more satisfying to read to my friends than\u00a0getting someone else\u2019s edits and have a group of strangers read my work whom\u00a0I\u2019ll never meet.<\/p>\n
Literary Critic, Cyril Connolly, said in 1933:<\/p>\n
It\u2019s better to write for yourself and have no public, than\u00a0to write for the public and have no self.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire\u00a0universe, deserve your love and affection. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 – – The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2558,"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-2559","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\/2559","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=2559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2560,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2559\/revisions\/2560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}