The machete
I have found, in any project that is important, but not urgent (meaning any project that really moves the action forward in a creative way rather than just being reactive) requires an almost brutal hacking out of time for its pursuit.
Mom is writing her memoirs, in a space I have hacked out for her.
We are encouraging her to keep writing in her own, quirky, exactingly-detailed way and she is worried about making it palatable to a general audience. Her writing style captures so much of her personality it would be unthinkable to wash HER out of the writing by watering it down.
Given that the time is precious (as all our time is) and she is unique in her experience and personality, I think a machete might be needed for both the time and the emotional space, the self-trust, to say what only she can say, exactly as she would naturally, whimsically, say it.
I was reminded of some lines in Emerson’s Self-Reliance:
- Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.
- Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim.
Maybe we are all more like Mom than we realize.Go forth, hack out a place for your Whim.