This is the final excerpt (a continuation of yesterday's post) from my 2000 book, How Much Joy Can You Stand? (Ballantine) which I'm about to re-release on the Net as a free ebook. (Watch for details here.)
The point is this: no matter what you take on, insecurity is part of the job description. It's not possible to blaze new trails and forge your own path while remaining on familiar ground. If you want to start a business, you take on financial risk. If you want to move to another part of the country, you plunge yourself and whomever is attached to you into the unknown. If you want to try any endeavor you care about, you're going to have to kick it out of that cozy little nook it has carved in your soul. And you're going to have to stand there and watch your dream as it takes its first baby steps. This is not an experience for people who crave comfort.
Writer Raymond Carver likened publishing his stories to riding at night in the back seat of a driverless car with no lights on.
And yet, such vulnerability can be a valuable part of the creative process. An acting teacher I once knew insisted that serious doubt is actually a very good sign, a signal that you're being completely honest and vulnerable in your work.
Mark Twain said of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , "I like it only tolerably well... and may possibly pigeonhole it, or burn the manuscript when it is done." As for me, I only know that I got through the first novel I published by convincing myself no one would ever read it. I was sure that this was yet another little piece of my own personal weirdness that no one would ever have to sit through. And yet, a major publisher actually bought it.
Daring to be heard, then, is simple. It's recognizing your cascades of self-doubt for what they are: a whole lot of hot air you've cooked up for absolutely no good reason at all. Then, it's mustering up the courage to trust yourself for five minutes anyway, because maybe you really do have something important to say. And, ultimately, it's having one of those defining little epiphanies and saying, "What the hell."
Daring to be heard means recognizing that if you put your voice out there, all you're going to get back is a yes or a no. The days of public stoning are long over; so is being pilloried. In fact, a large part of the world won't even be paying attention, no matter how loudly you scream.
Daring to be heard, ultimately, is something great you do for yourself. It's giving your poor, withered soul some fresh air and sunshine. Daring to be heard means stretching out languorously in the luxury of a strong opinion, or basking in the joy of planning an endeavor you've always wanted to start. No matter what your medium, the dream is yours and yours alone to realize in your own particular way. With the dream comes the chance to represent yourself in the world in a way that truly matters. Daring to be seen and heard becomes the chance for perfect freedom.
It becomes your chance to fly.
Try this ...
Take a pad of paper and a large, fat magic marker (big, black and permanent works wonderfully well.) Unplug the phone, get family and roommates out of the house, and close your door. Then spend the next half-hour gloriously scrawling out whatever opinion or idea or invective you've wanted to hurl in your life but didn't. Scribble it all out on that pad, as fast and furiously as you can. Don't stop. Don't judge. Don't even think. Just spew. If you run out of paper, get more! Just keep on going until you've said everything you had to say. If you find yourself crying, yelling and pounding the pillows on your bed, all the better.
I find this exercise to be particularly useful after stressful family visits or bad days at work.
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