If You're Worried This Might Be All There Is
On feeling lost in my own life
I’ve felt a strange sort of something during the first few weeks of this year, and I know it has to do with my writing. I say “a strange sort of something” because for a while I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. What is this strange feeling I’m feeling? It’s kind of a heaviness but also kind of an emptiness but also kind of a sense of being bored but also kind of an uncertainty but also kind of a melancholy but also kind of a disappointment but also kind of a waiting to see what’s next.
Have you ever felt that? Or some combination of the above?
I realized that at the heart of the “strange sort of something” was this sense that my writing is not yet what I want it to be. And recently I’ve wondered if perhaps it will never be what I want it to be: as good, as moving, as engaging. “What if I spend my entire life simply getting better, simply practicing to write a novel that I will never become good enough to write in my lifetime?”
I started to feel like I was lost on this journey without any real sense of where I was going, or if there is even a destination.
This is when I remembered that scene from The Hobbit when Bilbo is traveling through Mirkwood Forest with the dwarves and the path they’re on seems to be going on forever and the forest is closing in around them, all stuffy and musty and the air is hard to breathe. They feel like nothing will ever change, that the path they’re on is never-ending.
The dwarves convince Bilbo to climb up the highest tree and see if he can tell them how much further they have to go. Do you remember that scene? If my memory serves me correctly, at first Bilbo doesn’t want to do it but then he does it and when he gets to the top, at first he marvels at the freshness of the air and the brightness of the sunshine. He sees butterflies.
But then he is overcome with despair because, for as far as he can see, the forest seems to go on and on forever.
When Bilbo returns to the dark forest floor and shares this news with the dwarves, they despair. Their hope dies, and they end up leaving the trail, the one thing they were not supposed to do, all because Bilbo saw the forest stretching on forever in every direction.
Except there was this one thing they didn’t realize.
The forest didn’t go on forever and ever. Bilbo didn’t recognize that his tree, the tallest they could find, was situated at the bottom of a bowl-shaped valley. The forest actually ended just over the next ridge, but because Bilbo and the dwarves went only by what he could see in that moment, everyone lost hope.
Oh, how often I only go by what I can see now!
* * * * *
Recently I found the following Henri Nouwen quote and printed it out, stuck it in the bathroom where I’m forced to look at it, well, you know, fairly often. Here it is:
I have found it very important in my own life to try to let go of my wishes and instead to live in hope. I am finding that when I choose to let go of my sometimes petty and superficial wishes and trust that my life is precious and meaningful in the eyes of God, something really new, something beyond my own expectations, begins to happen in me.
To wait with openness and trust is an enormously radical attitude toward life. It is choosing to hope that something is happening for us that is far beyond our own imaginings. It is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life. It is living with the conviction that God molds us in love, holds us in tenderness, and moves us away from the sources of our fear…
This, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in world preoccupied with control.
-Henri Nouwen
Hmmm. Now there’s a quandary for a rainy January day. Maybe you’ve wondered the same, as you’ve gotten older. What if the wishes you had for your life as a younger person are never fulfilled?
This is where Henri Nouwen’s words come in.
Can I let go of my wishes and instead live in hope?
* * * * *
I shared this thought with Maile, and she listened as I explained the “some kind of feeling” I had been having this year, how I wondered if I would ever write the novel I wanted to write, and then she paused, and she looked away, and she pursed her lips the way she purses her lips before saying something she doesn’t think I want to hear.
“I’ve never said this to you about your writing,” she said hesitantly. Then she looked at me. “But there’s something about it that I’ve noticed that I think you should know. Now, before I get into that, I have to say that you write detail beautifully, you have something there that I can never do or capture, something really special.”
She paused. “But there’s also something else, something that’s missing from your writing.”
She went on to tell me something, in her view, that is fundamentally flawed about my fiction.
And I’ll share that with you next time.
In the meantime, check out some of these links:
In which I talk about leaving social media . . .
Lisa-Jo Baker Writes the Book She Never Thought She’d Write (podcast)
Maile joins Kris Camealy to talk about the writing life and owning your gifts (podcast)
And since I’m not on Instagram right now, I thought I’d share a few photos of meaningful things going on in my life:
Oh look how you’ve left us all hanging here!—-solid writing tactic! And thank you for your reflections. You’re not alone…it helps to know I’m not either.
You put words on exactly how I am feeling. For me right now it's - do I simply keep practicing or lay down my pen and go do something else? I feel like Bilbo in those trees. Thank you for being honest.