Posts Tagged ‘love’

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History Of Love

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

I enjoyed studying history in college as long as the professor doing the lecturing was a reasonably good storyteller. For instance, I had two excellent professors my first semester-and-a-half of Western Civilization. These two men made everything from the Greeks to the Enlightenment sound pretty interesting and I generally looked forward to their class. But when we came to the 20th century a specialist in modern history was recruited to do the lecturing. This man always wore the same rumpled brown sweater and made World War II sound like a dinner squabble. I daydreamed my way through Stalin’s purges.

But I think my falling out with history, and college in general, occurred in the middle of my freshman year. On this day I received a letter from my girlfriend informing me that our long distance relationship was not going to work. The letter flattened me. I should point out that I would marry this very girl ten years later, but I did not know that at the time I received the letter. Carrying this news in my heart, I trudged off to history during which I had to take an essay quiz where I was asked to offer my thoughts on the impact of liberal democracies on the French Revolution. Unfortunately, my only thoughts were, “None of this means anything whatsoever.”

History is a story we are constantly telling ourselves about all that has ever happened to everyone. We cannot repeat it because there will never be another Hitler or Julius Caesar or Joan of Arc. What repeats itself over and over again is the desire within every human being to express their unique and inimitable life at the same time every other human being is trying to express their unique and inimitable life. This confluence creates infinite challenges and potential, from wars and famines to cathedrals and symphonies, all of it in the name of humanity’s desire for authentic expression.

At eighteen I had begun to understand that love in some form or another was the only thing that mattered to me. There is, after all, no more authentic expression than love, whether love of stories, food, politics, or another person. I’m sure my professors loved history, but there we parted ways. If you love the story we call history, then love on, but know that we retell the story of our past for the same reason we tell all stories, whether real or wholly imagined: not to understand what has happened, but to acquire a lens of metaphor through which to see the present moment and reveal in its new refraction what we love most.

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The Good Parent

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

Parents can find themselves saying some pretty stupid things as they go about the ceaseless job of parenting. For instance, you might have bought a new couch. Perhaps this is the most expensive piece of living room furniture you have ever owned. When you saw it in the showroom, you imagined the feelings of luxury and comfort into which you would sink every time you sat upon or beheld that beautiful new couch. The couch becomes symbol of the kind of lovely life you plan to lead henceforth.

And then you introduce your young children to this couch, and lo! They do not share your sense of wonder for the new furniture. For them, it is simply a different shaped, different colored couch, and if memory serves, they were allowed to jump and down on and even eat desert while sitting on the other couch. And so, the first time you peel a Gummy Bear off the cushion, you hear yourself asking the meaningless question, “Can’t we own anything nice in this house?”

This is what comes of trying to coerce other people into feeling the same way about something that you do. You can create laws and consequences ten yards long to try to replicate in another’s behavior your own love and respect for something, but no command will ever replace true desire.

This is why you must be the first and most fervent advocate of your work. If things go well, you will find the agent and editor who love and believe in what you have written, but no matter how large the congregation appears to grow, you remain a church of one.  You are the owner of a business, and the agent, editor, copy editor, distributor, and bookseller are but contractors.

No one’s enthusiasm for what you have made ever can or should match your own. Readers and publishers will hopefully love it in their own way, but you alone will have to hold to your belief through rejection and delays and fired editors. It is with some relief then that you hand the stewardship of this story’s journey over to the hearts of the reading world. They will love it or not, but they will never have the chance unless you hold it first with your full, unwavering, unconditional devotion.

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The One

Monday, July 12th, 2010

I cannot watch shows like The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. I’m sure these shows make for good drama, but the sight of people in open competition for (theoretically, anyway) love stirs in me all the worst and stingiest visions of the world. Love is the very opposite of competition. You cannot compete to love or be loved. If you love someone you may or may not marry them, but you will love them all the same, because love is an expression of all that interests you most, an interest generated entirely by you and through you. Love cannot be won or lost any more than a river must be given permission to flow.

But I understand that some people or things are perceived as so universally desirable that, given their singularity, an imaginary competition arises just the same. Take writers conferences. I will be attending the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference soon where 500 or so hopeful writers will descend upon about 25 agents. Every one of those 500 writers knows they need an agent to sell their manuscript, and every one of those writers knows that only a fraction of their number will walk away from this conference with representation. Given those statistics, and given the reality of the publishing business, is this not a competition?

Yes, if these were the only 25 agents in the world. If you are looking for an agent, and you go to a conference like the PNWC, remember that you are not looking for any agent but for the right agent. All those young women on The Bachelor should not be asking, “Oh, will he pick me?” They should be asking, “Is he right for me?” The same is true of you. You need the very best agent for what you write. Nothing less will do.

Of course, the thrill of shows like The Bachelor is that the girl who is finally chosen becomes The One. She is special. How does she know? Well, the bachelor chose her over all these other pretty and poised young women. Now it’s proven and she’ll never have to wonder again. Until she does wonder, or winds up on the cover of People.

Do not wait for the publishing world to tell you you are special. Do not wait to be The One. You already are. There is none other like you and never has been and never will be—it is impossible to be otherwise. And your job is not to convince anyone you are special, or prove to anyone, or demonstrate to anyone. Your job is to simply know, be it, and let those who love that specialness as naturally as they love everything find you.

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Go Viral

Monday, June 14th, 2010

I recently released a short video, The Writing Spirit, an inspirational compilation featuring Sir Ken Robinson, Yann Martel, Richard Bach, and several others. You can watch it here.  I am happy to report that the video has quickly begun to go viral, in the best – and I guess only good – sense of the word.  This is due in large part to Ken Robinson, whose single tweet about the video generated hundreds of hits alone, thereby stoking the viral fires.

I did not begin writing or start a magazine because I had a love of marketing. In fact, I viewed marketing as an odious duty I would someday hand over to savvy professionals. But necessity breeds not only invention but education, and I have come to understand marketing as what it obviously is or at least can be: a tool to share what we love the most.

Which is why I love the concept of the viral video/email/article, and the technologies like twitter, Facebook, and email that enable this viraling. Human beings are absolutely hard wired to share what they love, whether they created that thing they love, or beheld that thing they love. We share fear as well, of course, and this is the traditional concept of the virus. Just as you can catch a cold, so too can you can catch fear: the government is run by morons who don’t care about us; the publishing world is impossible to break into; no one makes any money as a writer.

But love can spread just as quickly as fear, and because I loved this video, because I loved making it, because I couldn’t bear to see it sullied with even one frame of fear, I can only assume that these strangers emailing the Youtube link to one another must love it too, for why else would they share it? This is when this thing we call marketing becomes not just exciting and profitable, but inspiring. It is the greatest testament to humanity’s fundamental generosity that the first thing any of us think to do when we find something we love is share it. Love is not some commodity to be acquired and traded, it is every bit a virus, something living that only increases with exposure.

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What Survives

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Daniel Pink’s book Drive brought out the missionary in me. I hadn’t gotten through the introduction and I was already quoting it to my wife. Drive is about what motivates people to do what they do, and the introduction begins with a story of an experiment conducted on monkeys years ago. The monkeys had to solve a simple puzzle, and what the test discovered, to the scientists’ confusion and amazement, was the monkeys solved the puzzle without any reward whatsoever being offered. No food, no affection—nothing. What’s more, when food was offered as a reward, the monkeys did worse.

I knew I wanted to interview Daniel as soon as I read this. Why did the monkeys solve the puzzle if doing so didn’t bring them food, shelter, or affection? Apparently because solving the puzzle pleased them. And apparently this need—this intrinsic need, as Pink describes it—is as strong if not stronger than all those survival-based needs. Pink goes on to show how humans, to the contrary of all the motivational thought of the last few centuries, are far more motivated by an intrinsic need for progress and pleasure than the rewards of money and fame or the threat of punishment.

How revolutionary. And yet it is. There is a comfort in the simplistic carrot and stick approach to motivation. If people are at base animals trying to survive, then in the end the best way to get them to do what we want them to do is to appeal to their need for safety or their fear of harm.

But if you’ve ever tried to write a book, you know the carrot and stick not only don’t apply, they don’t even exist. No one will punish you for not writing a book they haven’t asked to read, and if it’s money you’re after, writing is probably not the quickest means to that end. Yet you have to love writing to write a book, and once you have discovered something you love to do, you would just about rather crawl into a ditch and die than have that thing taken from you.

Survival is a fear-based, ersatz motivation. In fact, it is not even motivation; it is merely racing away from death. True motivation moves us toward something. Not moving toward what you love is a death all its own, though fortunately a death from which you can be resurrected with something as simple as a choice.

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Another Light

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Many lives follow a similar arc, the middle of which often involves a dramatic reevaluation of what the first forty or so years was all about and how the next forty years should be spent. The answer to this question frequently includes service of some kind, the beautiful paradox that the best way to fulfill yourself is to be of use to another.

My first real girlfriend and I disagreed on a number of things, one of which was that I was not interested in joining any causes. This was the early eighties, and I was not inclined to march against nukes or for whales or what-have-you. “You have to be for something,” she told me. I said I couldn’t help it. I just wanted to tell stories.

I felt at the time, though I couldn’t express it, that telling stories was enough. I still feel that way. The normal explanation made by artists who feel the way I do is that we are doing our level best to bring a little beauty and joy into the world, and “in these troubling times” don’t we all need as much of that as we can? Fair enough, and certainly true, but still, in my mind, not the whole point.

To tell a story well, you must be in service to it, the story. That is, you cannot tell a story to prove what a great and clever writer you are or to make you lots of money or get you on The Daily Show. All the choices you make, every word, should be in service to the whole of the story you wish to share and nothing more. Nearly every writer I’ve interviewed reports a sense that a story came to him or her. That is, they didn’t invent the story, they found it, and then were charged with the task of translating it for the rest of the world.

Working in service to a story will not feed the hungry or dethrone the wicked, not directly anyway, but every time a person sets aside their ego to share something they love, another light in the darkness is lit. A perfect cure-all, if you ask me. To paraphrase Einstein, what we call darkness is merely the absence of light, and what we call evil is merely the absence of love.

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Christmas Spirit

Friday, December 18th, 2009

Christmas time is near, and so those must be chains I hear rattling in my attic. Ghosts are as fond of bright lights and happy music as they are of shadows and cobwebs. I loved Christmas as a boy for the star on top of the tree and the songs about Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward Men because who in their right mind wouldn’t want that?

Even though gifts are disappointing compared to songs, it’s easy to become confused that what you want is wrapped in a bright package. After all, you know you want something. You know that as sure as you know you must eat. You know that you are looking for something, but the search is as frightening as it is fascinating because what if you never find it?

I think a small part of me died whenever I opened a gift and felt disappointed that what I was looking for wasn’t in a box. Except what dies cannot stay buried, and so roams my attic in chains, waking me in the middle of the night or interrupting my gruel. Ghosts never want to leave you alone no matter how kindly you beg.

Yet the more I hear from them, the more I see they hold no grudge. Very generous, considering I killed them once. They just make such a racket. It’s hard to do anything else when they are around, least of all write. I finally invited a few in, and frankly they scared me straight out of my nightshirt at first sight. They tell me graveyards are for the living, not the dead. Christmas is for the dead—so here they are.

I tell them Christmas is about a baby in a manger and Figgie Pudding and a fire in the fireplace and a decent bottle of wine. They tell me I have it all wrong. Christmas is every bit about ghosts. They will haunt me as long as I want know love. Build a tree to love and light a star on top and they come all the quicker. And why shouldn’t they? Love beckons what I need most, and lights the path toward what I have been searching for.

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The Sellout

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

A young man who works with me on the magazine is contemplating returning to college and finishing his degree. In the meantime, he is an avid and varied reader, picking up everything from A Tale of Two Cities to Noam Chomsky. Last night I said to him, “You know what you are?  You’re a buccaneer scholar.” “Buccaneer scholar” is a term James Bach coined in his book by the same title to describe people who learn independently outside of a traditional school setting.

My friend seemed to like this description. “Yeah, I’ve always learned that way,” he said. “That’s why I worry about selling out if I go back to school.”

I told him he should do whatever he wanted and never worry about selling out. I have never liked the term sellout. It’s a mean spirited assessment of someone else’s business. But it’s obvious enough why have the phrase. All artists—all people, really—are wrestling to some degree with the question of whether what they love most can keep bread on the table. The sellout, it would seem, has sacrificed all honor and love for mammon. His reward is a large house and an empty heart.

The inference, of course, is that the sellout should have been willing to accept whatever meager living his passion could afford him. Yet why would we care what someone else chooses to do with their time? Why waste a single breath complaining about what roles an actor takes or what books and author writes?

Because we don’t really care what anyone else is doing. We care about what we will do, and every time some artist we admire makes a choice that seems to have been made with an eye on the marketplace instead of the heart, we might let our own resolve crumble just a little bit. Never mind that we have no idea nor any business knowing why someone does or doesn’t do something—we invent their reasons to answer our own fears, either for or against.

One of the greatest lessons we can all learn is that love, if you let it, can beget wealth. The two are not mutually exclusive. Yet we have often divided them, rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But they are not divided at all, they are one in the same, and when you can wed them, the world turns from a harsh landscape to be endured through whatever means necessary, to a garden exactly as beautiful as the amount of love with which it was sewn.

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Nothing Right

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

About ten years ago I got shingles, a disease with which I was unfamiliar until it began appearing on my forehead above my right eye. I was diagnosed on a Saturday by an eye doctor who, by whatever logic, believed that the only reason a healthy young man like me could ever get shingles is if he had AIDS.

I was prescribed an anti-viral medicine, whose primary side effect was sustained nausea. I then spent a sleepless night in my bed, staring down my mortality and feeling vaguely sick to my stomach. At about three in the morning, I had a visitation.

I had asked myself, or anyone who was listening, why I was sick, and a voice immediately answered, “Because you think you have to be perfect!”

“No,” I replied. “That’s not true—”

“Yes it is!”

I allowed that maybe it was, and recovered surprisingly quickly.  On Monday, I learned from my internist that lots of healthy people get shingles, but fortunately, by that time, the work of the disease had already been done.

There isn’t a worse disease for a writer to suffer from than perfectionism. Once infected you sit down at your desk every day with the sole objective of “getting it right.” The pain of shingles is nothing compared to the self-torture of getting your work “right.” It is like working for a capricious dictator, pleased with your efforts one day, disgusted by them the next.

I used to think the worst part of trying to get my work right was the sheer Sisyphean impossibility of it.  There was no right, of course, and so I could spend all my life if I so chose chasing some shadow always a stride ahead of me. However, merely not being able to do something is annoying, but not painful.

The only pain I have ever known is the absence of love. In trying to get it right, I required myself to cut off from the actual source of my creative work, a source that knows no right or wrong, only the pleasure of allowing that which I desire through in the clearest form possible. When I looked at what I had written and called it bad, I was actually mourning my time spent outside the steam of love.

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Love Where You’re Headed

Friday, September 25th, 2009

I fell in love with my wife when I saw her in a production of The Taming of the Shrew.  It did not matter that I was only seventeen at the time—I knew I had found the real thing.  When her parents moved her from our hometown of Providence to Seattle, I moaned to my mother that I did not think I would ever meet anyone like her ever again. I suppose my mother rolled her eyes at this, but as it happened I was right. Ten years later, we were married.

Now, my characters tend to fall in love at first sight. As such, I have been tempted to waste some ink trying to paint the most desirable portrait of whomever my hero has fallen in love with. But in all my writings about characters falling in love, and in my experience of reading other writers writing about people falling in love, I have come to this conclusion: no matter how hard you try, no matter how full her lips or dashing his eyes, you cannot convince a reader someone is handsome or beautiful simply by listing their physical assets.

There is not one single person on the planet that every single other person on the planet finds attractive. Beauty in the end remains a great fish story except to he who has beheld it. This is because love, beauty, and attraction have very little to do with what someone looks like and all to do with where they are headed.

We are always drawn to someone’s energy. That energy may take the form of a svelte waist or disheveled hair—it doesn’t matter. It is energy, which is intention, which is a direction. Life is not a static thing after all but a trajectory, and we know, when we link with someone else, we are now headed somewhere together, whether that is in conversation or in bed or in the mall.

When I was a young man I always wanted to write love stories. I took this to mean I was a romantic of sorts, but I understand now I was not. What I loved was the moment of someone recognizing love, for in that moment you feel the spark of interest, a curiosity racing you toward the life you want to live.

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