For the last few
days I’ve been meditating on Ernest Hemingway’s notion that we have to “write hard
and clear about what hurts.” Initially, this quote puzzled me because most sane
people go out of their way to avoid what hurts. But writers are different
because we try to use the pain as a catalyst to mirror back the beauty in
suffering. Or, at least that’s what I tell myself when I’m digging around in my
brain for a new story idea.
After finishing
my first novel in 2014, I’ve spent the last few months trying to replenish my
creative well by hiding from what hurts. I started thinking that our old pal
Ernie might have been wrong. After all, why would anyone willingly submerge themselves
into a river of pain? It seems every nightly news broadcast is hell-bent on
highlighting the suffering and that has yet to inspire me. But, isn’t that the
whole deal? Isn’t that why we’ve elected to participate in this journey?
Writing is all
about exploring the one thing connecting us all: the shared human experience. For
me, writing is about digging a bit deeper into the spiritual nature of that experience
and trying to make sense of it all. As seekers we spend so much of our time,
money, and effort thinking about Otherness. One of the reasons writing is so important
is because it helps us to share in our Otherness by acknowledging the many ‘other’
things we can’t define, understand, or explain.
I don’t want to
be afraid of writing “hard and clear about what hurts” because I know that’s
the best way to creatively express something worthwhile. There’s responsibility
in attempting to share our madness and it’s this: if we really know, if we understand what it means to share this human experience, then we have to
forgive ourselves for the madness, we have to love our enemies, and most of all
…we have to stop charging, punishing, excluding, judging, and destroying each
other.
And most would ask
who is capable of such Love? Certainly, religion, government, and media want
you to doubt, draw lines, and rely on payment for progression. I don’t yet love
my enemies, I still judge the wrong, and I have trouble understanding anyone
who doesn’t want the best for me, you, this world, or themselves but I’m
working on it and I hope you will too.
Because, in the
end, fear can only destroy…it won’t create anything. Legacies are built on Love
because Love is a creative force. It’s what Hemingway’s words mean to me, it’s
what we need to reach for and share in order for any of this to survive.
And that’s the
hard, clear truth I’m going to write about today.
Very introspective and extrospective.
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