When the Well is Dry
"Once in a dry season..."
This week, Substack has loomed over me like a, well, smokestack.
Every time I look up it’s there, towering, casting a shadow.
There are plenty of times I feel short on writing inspiration, plenty of times it takes effort to get to the desk and put one word after another.
This week has been strange, though. This isn’t the usual garden variety resistance, it is a profound niggle, like that pebble burrowed into the mesh of your insole that won’t be shaken out; every time I’ve thought, must work on my Substack, my mind and body have veered in another direction: magnet-like.
Discussing Substack with a friend a few months back, I admitted that my efforts increasingly feel like noise.
What am I saying that hasn’t already been said?
What advice am I able to offer that hasn’t already been dispense?
What issues do I tackle that haven’t already been addressed (more ably) by someone else?
Photo by Charles Chen on Unsplash
“There is nothing new under the sun,” the author of Ecclesiastes observed; boy, if s/he could see us now.
So. Much. Information. So little time to process it all.
Sometimes it feels like the entire world is yammering frantically, and no one is listening. Am I? Do I even remember how to listen?
I’m not sure.
A counsellor told me to practice mindfulness, but I forget to do the breathing exercises. Too busy fiddling with my calendar and worrying about my teeth and ordering things online. Too busy planning ahead or trying to rewrite the past.
It isn’t a stretch to believe the best thing I could do for any of my students is tell them: none of the things they tell you matter matter. Not grades. Not competitions. Not your resume. Not your activities list. Not being head of the class.
None of that is going to make you a whole person. None of that is going to enable you to form meaningful relationships. None of that is going to feed your soul.
At best, it’ll keep the wolf from your door; that’s not nothing, but let’s not confuse it with existential purpose. There is merit in doing well and sharpening the tools you need to build a meaningful life, but if you’re not careful, kids, you’ll wind up mistaking gold stars for achievements themselves.
You don’t have to be a master of the universe to have a rich experience on Earth. Wind up as one of those preening bastards and it’ll be a good sign that you’re dead inside.
What is praised as “success” in our weird, frantic, postmoderning-itself-out-of-existence culture is a recipe for alienation, isolation, insanity.
What is the point in gaining the world if you lose your soul?
That is a pragmatic question, not an esoteric one.
Happiness and success are not mutually exclusive, but only one is inclusive of the other: if you’re happy, you’ve already won; if you think you’ve won and you’re not happy, think again.
Where am I going with this?
You tell me, please.
I don’t want to be part of cacophony. I want to find — or create — the thing that nobody else can share as well as I.
Is Substack serving that purpose?
My friend suggested carrying on to see what emerges. Maybe that’s the right thing to do. Maybe the better thing is to step away and let someone else fill the silence.
Thoughts?