Completely Me

I published a book this summer called Everyone Has What It Takes. I could have just as easily called it You Are Your Imagination Though I Know It Doesn’t Seem That Way. That’s a long title, but I still like it. I like it because I often forget that it’s true. Most of the time I do not think of myself as my imagination. Instead, I hold a vague image of what I am, some unspecific combination of my body and my abilities and my ambitions.

I only really identify with my body when it’s up to no good, when I think I should lose weight, or something is hurting, or I’m feeling ill. Even then, I am mostly upset with it, wondering why it is betraying me. In truth, I am that which wants this body to do one thing or another, or to look this or that way. There is a difference – just as there is a difference between me and my abilities. These abilities have changed over the years, changed as my attention has changed, changed as I have learned and listened. What I can do is not fixed, but is a response to the desires of that which I call myself.

Of the three, my ambitions are closest to my imagination, being ideas about my future only I can see. Though they are still the product of my imagination, not my imagination itself. While many of my ambitions have remained steady, have been a sort of North Star toward which I travel, others have changed as experience teaches me what I want more of and less of in my life. If I am aware of a change, then I am not that change. I am the awareness.

I suppose, like so many, this is why I was drawn to writing. I thought it was because I liked telling myself stories on the page – and I did – but I believe I also wanted an uncluttered relationship with myself, with that awareness from which the stories came. To write, I have to forget about everything but my imagination, forget about everything except the story I want to tell, the reality I want to create. Only my awareness that knows no limitations can tell these stories or create these realities. And only this awareness that has no shape or form, no beginning or end, that can conceive of absolutely anything, is complete enough as it is to be me.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com