A Common Puzzle

Apparently, I’m now a crossword-puzzle guy. There are a lot of us, I know, but I never thought I would be one. Whenever I glanced at them and their enigmatic clues, they seemed like tests I would inevitably fail. I don’t consider myself someone who knows things like the capitals non-European countries, or the names of rivers, or the titular characters of Victorian novels. In school, where you were most definitely expected to know things, I usually did okay on tests, but I mostly hated the idea of failing them. I may be a wee bit competitive.

Yet here I am looking forward to the NYT crossword. All it takes is getting a few right answers and you quickly get addicted to the rush of achievement. Also, at fifty-nine, it seems I do know some things, which is actually less gratifying than I might have thought. It’s unraveling the clues that is most interesting, the not knowing and then knowing. Little mysteries solved over and over. Life itself can seem pretty mysterious, what with all the enigmatic motivations moving people and animals and weather and nations. There are days I even think, “What’s up with me, anyway?” I’m kind of mysterious to myself.

In this way, I’m like the stories I tell. The more I think about them, the more I try to understand them, the less sense they make. It’s maddening, and can quickly summon the hollow, pointlessness of failure. I know nothing. So, there I’ll sit in my nothingness, wanting to quit everything, which is usually the point I stop thinking. What a relief that is. All the suffering in my life has come at the hands of my fruitless thinking. Nice to remember I can shut it off for a moment.

And isn’t it nice, in that peaceful space, to feel yourself again? Not you thinking, but just you being. There may not always seem to be a difference, but there is. You know there is because the still-self, the waiting-self, the being-self is the one who receives the answers to all the questions we ask. It’s mysterious and it isn’t. It’s how it’s always been, it’s as reliable as the sun, and somewhere in you, you’ve always known it because it’s who you really are.

Check out Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

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