Hasten slowly

I spent time in my garden on the weekend. I’m creating a new pathway beside my house—a project that requires heavy lifting and dogged perseverance on my part. The work reminded me of a post I wrote in September 2011: Hasten slowly. I decided to share it with you again, because I like the sentiment so much.

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“Hasten slowly and you will soon reach your destination.”   —Milarepa

I came upon that quote in Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance by Julia Cameron. When we busy ourselves doing something that we really believe in but rewards are slow coming, it is easy to get discouraged. Whether it is raising money for a good cause, writing a book, or facing another day with a troublesome co-worker,  sometimes we just need a little push to carry on.

But, how can we hasten . .  . slowly? Isn’t that an oxymoron?

And yet, it seems we do. When I think about it, every valuable part of my life has come to me out of hastening slowly.

• A university degree: scribbling notes and typing assignments during caffeine-driven all-nighters—for four years
• A thriving marriage: career juggling, whirlwind vacations, chasing around after toddlers, paying down the mortgage—for 22 years
• Children: pacing the floor during sleepless nights, car pooling to hockey games, gritting teeth at parent-teacher interviews, wanting everything to be perfect for them—for, well, forever
• Published writing: handwriting first drafts, transcribing messy second drafts, editing, reading aloud, pacing, getting up in the middle of the night to change a word—for days, weeks, years

No matter what the destination, to get there, we need to hasten, and then wait.

To create the perfect garden, we hasten to plant the seeds, remove the weeds, water the seedlings, and slowly a beautiful garden appears. To learn to play “Moonlight Sonata,” we hasten to the piano bench and play, practise, play, and slowly the music smooths out to a beautiful melody. When we learn to speak a language, we hasten to recite the verbs, converse with friends, practise the accent, and slowly we come to think, live, dream in the language.

And if we stop typing, juggling, paying, pacing, gritting, planting, weeding, watering, playing, practising, reciting, conversing—if we stop hastening—then we never reach the destination.

Whatever your destination, hasten to it, and slowly you will arrive.

How the universe answer my request for perseverance: Fun.

Photo courtesy of RozSheffield from Flickr

Have you ever had an unusual and timely answer to a plea or question?

I spent the weekend at a Healing Pathway workshop. During one session, I had to ponder an intention. It didn’t take me long for mine to bubble up.

I needed a push to persevere.

Being a writer isn’t easy. Every day I receive feedback from someone about something I’ve done wrong. It could be as simple as a misplaced comma, or as a grand as a challenge to my central theme, but no matter how large or how small, every negative comment dents my armour. Most days I’m strong. I accept it as part of the job and use it to better my work. But every once in a while, all those dents blast a hole. When feedback tells me, over and over again, I have failed in some way, or my writing is off target, or “not what we’re looking for,” or just plain “not good enough,” I wonder why I do it.

In my daily life I get paid to write in a corporate environment. I’m not passionate about the subject for which I get well paid. I am passionate about my creative writing, though. My short stories and my blog stir my blood—and garner very little financial compensation for me. Lately, that frustrates me. I’m supposed to follow my bliss, right? All the self-help gurus say when you’re doing what you’re supposed to do, money flows to you. So why the disconnect in my case? What gives?

What. Is. Up. With. That?

I carried my frustration and discouragement into the weekend. Why bother with all this creative writing? Life would be so much easier without it, really. So, I said to the universe, (or God, or whatever you choose to call that mystery we’re all trying to figure out): “What do you have to say to me about perseverance?”

At the end of the day, I climbed into my car, turned the key and the song “Carry On” by Fun. blasted out of my radio.

Let it never be said that the universe doesn’t have a sense of humour.

My favourite line from the song: “May your past be the sound of your feet upon the ground.” What a profound, inspirational blessing. The line fires me up and rekindles my spirit. In ten years, or 20 years, no matter what happens, I hope to look over my shoulder at the past and listen for the sound of my feet upon the ground, step by step, going somewhere, taking action, doing something, trying. Persevering.

Using social media: Be kind

From @whitehouse on Twitter

Last week in the White House briefing room, Obama said, “I’m presenting a fair deal. The fact that they don’t take it means that I should somehow do a ‘Jedi mind-meld’ with these folks and convince them to do what’s right.”

If you’re not a sci-fi fan, he made the mistake of mixing up Jedi (a Star Wars reference) with the Vulcan mind meld (of Star Trek fame).

I don’t know about you, but I find that kind of charming—I might have made the same mistake myself on a bad day—but social media exploded with comments.

“Obama just confused Star Trek and Star Wars by saying Jedi Mind Meld. I think it’s time to impeach.” @DepressedDarth

“Something something something sequester something economy about to tank something something HEY LOOKIE OBAMA SAID JEDIMINDMELD HAR HAR.” @scalzi

“by referring to a “Jedimindmeld,” Obama has opened himself up to charges of being a fake geek girl.” @scratchbomb

I just finished reading Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday, and the book opened my eyes to the potential of social media to cause irreparable damage very quickly. One simple mistake, one slip-up gets tweeted, re-tweeted, linked and re-linked until it spreads like wildfire around the world. In some cases, the notoriety eviscerates careers or reputations and leaves the shell of a person or business picking up broken pieces. Sadly, sometimes the information being spread across the globe is rumour or false information, damaging a person’s life for no valid reason.

Barack Obama, or probably more correctly, Barack Obama’s staff, handled this issue with humour and managed to turn the tide in his favour. Crisis averted—in this case.

Please, be kind. Don’t believe every rumour. Don’t spread every juicy piece of gossip. Think about how you would feel if you were the subject of that topic of the social media conversation—do a Jedi mind meld with them, if you will—because some day it might be you.

Cursive writing: Who needs it anyway?

In the news this week: teachers are no longer required to teach kids cursive writing. Kids still learn out to print; they just don’t learn the weird letter formations looped together. And if they don’t learn how to write bs and rs in the cursive way, they won’t be able to read them either.

Media reports predicted doom and gloom—our children will no longer be able to read handwritten thank you letters from great-aunts. Horrors.

When I heard the news, I thought to myself, “Well, at least my kids know how.” They are 18 and 15 years old, and cursive writing was part of their curriculum. When the topic came up in conversation at dinner though, my son said, “I can’t read cursive.”

“What?” I said, shocked. “I remember watching you practice writing.”

“Yeah, for about two weeks in Grade 3.” He shrugged. “When the teachers write cursive on the board, I can read it better than some, but . . .”

Shocking to think that in 100 years our handwriting will be like hieroglyphics to next generations, or that university courses will teach how to read cursive.

But maybe it’s not as bad as all that. After all, most cursive letters mirror the printed version. Kids decipher the meaning from the letters that match and the context. And handwriting in the last generation has deteriorated anyway as people reject strict form for creativity and individuality. When I look at my aunts’ handwriting, theirs could be used as part of “How to Write Cursive” instruction manuals: perfect letters lined up in perfect rows. Mine? Not so much. My bs and rs look like the printed version, and many letters don’t get looped together at all. I did two writing samples: one of my usual handwriting and one in proper cursive. I had to struggle to get cursive right. I had to look up how to write the z. The bs were particularly hard. I guess I’m part of the crossover generation.

Kids don’t learn to write and read cursive because they don’t need to—societal evolution at play. That’s not the only way they are different. Ask teenagers the time, and they won’t look at a watch. They don’t even have watches. They look at cell phones.

I wonder what will shock my kids in another 30 or 40 years? Maybe keyboards will become obsolete, and my kids will be shocked to discover my grandchildren don’t know how to touch-type. Who knows?

In the meantime, if you need to communicate on paper with a teenager, might be a good idea to print.

Freedom to Read: What do Peter Rabbit and King Lear have in common?

“Freedom to read can never be taken for granted. Even in Canada, a free country by world standards, books and magazines are banned at the border. Schools and libraries are regularly asked to remove books and magazines from their shelves.”

Several years ago during a long car ride, I read Cheaper By the Dozen out loud to the family. (My Grade 6 teacher, Mrs. Judd, had read it aloud to our class, and I remembered the book fondly.) I got to the point where the mother in the story talked about a low-class or unrefined person, and I stopped reading.

What?” my kids asked

I silently considered my options. The author, when describing a vulgar, low-class, person, used the word “Eskimo.” I couldn’t in good conscience:

(a) use this word to describe the First Nations group without some explanation about why we don’t use the word anymore, or

(b) let that word be associated forever in my kids’ minds with ill-mannered people.

I took a few minutes to explain the back-story of the word, give it some context, and then I read on. It’s a good book – except for that one word.

I’ll tell you what though, I would NEVER read Huckleberry Finn out loud.

This story came to mind because it’s Freedom to Read Week, a time to open our minds to books and book content. What seems subversive and inappropriate to you might be just what someone else needs. Books like Cheaper By the Dozen and Huckleberry Finn give us valuable historical context, even if we don’t like the history, maybe especially because we don’t like the history. They remind us of where we were and the costs that came with it, so we never visit that place again.

If you read Bannings and Burnings in History, the list includes Galileo, Hemingway, and Shakespeare. My favourite on the list is Beatrix Potter’s A Tale of Peter Rabbit because it contained only “middle-class rabbits.”

Freedom to Read week honours freedom of expression. It encourages us to fire up our brain cells to discern quality reading material for ourselves—for ourselves, but not for others.

So, pick up a volume of Shakespeare, or Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, or even go to the movies to see Les Misérables. Do your bit to honour those spectacular controversial works of art.

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Read the Position Statement of Freedom of Expression and Freedom to Read

http://www.freedomtoread.ca/who-we-are/position-statement/

 

Punctuating our remarks: to semi-colon, or not to semi-colon

Are you a stickler for grammar and punctuation? Do semi-colons make you smile, or scowl? How about exclamation points? Too many of them make me crazy!!!

On Tuesday night, our Canadian Authors Association group talked about critiquing. A few weeks before the meeting, the moderator of the group gave two of us a story to read, so we could prepare a constructive critique presentation for the meeting.

The author of the piece used semi-colons to structure parts of the story; some paragraphs consisted of several sentences (“independent clauses” snooty writers would call them) joined by semi-colons.

I like semi-colons; they solve many punctuation dilemmas beautifully. In this case I thought full-stop sentences would serve the story better. My opinion was not unanimous; some people love their semi-colons.

Our discussion on Tuesday brought to mind the post by Tom Gething, “Interview with a Semi-Colon”.

Punctuation marks elicit surprisingly strong reactions from people.

As with most things, I fall somewhere in the middle. One of my Facebook friends posts with no punctuation (and often no capitals) at all. Many times, it has taken me several tries to figure out what he’s talking about. We really do need punctuation to communicate clearly. But overall, I don’t stress about punctuation. Let a writer be a little creative, if that’s what feels right for him or her.

Well, okay, except for all those exclamation points. Please, people, if you must use one (and you’d be surprised at how often you don’t need to), just one will do.

Maybe you can play with the new Interrobang. That should keep you busy for a while.

Photo from Wikipedia