David Whyte
The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness.
These are the words of contemporary poet, David Whyte, quoting his associate, Benedictine monk, Brother David.
Whatever you plan is to small for you live.
Charles Bukowski
Says the same but in his inimitable harsher style.
So You Want To Be A Writer
if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.
don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.
Trust what you will do wholeheartedly?
Do you have the patience to do what you can be bothered to do wholeheartedly?
I don’t always but I am glad when I do.
Think you are bound hand-and-foot to task you have to do, should do, and nevertheless hate doing?
Try this exercise. Nightly, add to your gratitude diary a line on
Style. The style you wrote to your life today.
Simplicity. An activity you conducted with aplomb and elegance (or more than you do usually).
Story. Re-write the story of your day in a few lines with you in charge being the person you want to be (I designed this for employees turned entrepreneurs – put your employee story aside and write as an entrepreneur and business owner.)
Simultaneity. Note when you panicked about living wholeheartedly and ask why you cannot make your choice and act your choice at exactly the same time (the way an owner must make a business decision and take the fame or blame or whatever).
Is this impatience? Hmm. I don’t thinks so. It’s just stopping our storyline wandering off into impatience. And we begin to trust the world a little more.
