Time To Create

I was thinking recently about the things I have wanted in my life, and it occurred to me that I have gotten absolutely all of them. And when I say wanted, I don’t mean fantasized about. I fantasize when I am trying to solve the problem of my unhappiness by picturing a set of circumstances in which happiness will be supplied to me by those conditions, the way a home provides me with warmth and shelter. Nothing I imagine in this way ever comes to pass, for in these dreams I do not have any portion of what I want. All of it exists sometime and somewhere else.

But to authentically desire something is to already possess some amount of it and then recognize that I would like more of it. For instance, when I say I want to publish a book, it’s true that for a time the book does not exist in its final form, that I do not have that book. But I have the experience of writing the book, which is how I come to first know it and own it, and I have had the experience of sharing something I love with other people. Publishing a book is simply the means by which I share something I love with others that I happen to have written. In this way, publishing is an extension of something already in my immediate, known experience, whether a book is my first or my fiftieth.

Sometimes the things I’ve wanted have come to me quickly, but more often they have come frustratingly slowly. The rate at which they appear has nothing to do with chance. In fact, it is the very notion of chance that slows their arrival. Polluting all that I have and all that I want more of is the idea that maybe I’ll get more and maybe I won’t, that the answer is arbitrary, the result of some invisible mechanism over which I have no more say than I would the roll of a die. I’ll just have to wait and see and hope.

This is called doubt. Doubt has slowed the creation of what I want in the exact same way it obstructs the way forward in a story I’m writing. As long as I doubt I’ll find the way, I do not find the way. It is as sure and predictable as gravity. I have learned to exclude doubt from my daily writing, largely because what I want (the next word or sentence) comes so quickly, compared to the other things in my life. Time is a tricky partner in this way. Do I trust his intentions, that he is working with me to help bring together the necessary pieces of my puzzle even though I cannot perceive his efforts?

Too often I have not trusted him – and oh, I have suffered. This suffering is entirely my own, dreamed and created and experienced by me alone. Time is not interested in it. It will wait until I am done doubting and grieving to resume its work. Fortunately, doubt takes so much effort, being ultimately unnatural, that I eventually drop it from sheer fatigue. And what do I find when it’s cleared? The thing I want in its nascent form, there within me, ready to grow and spread when I will water it again with my attention.

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