A Hope for Now

For the past four weeks, I’ve published postings about where I am emotionally with regard to my life and my writing. Today’s posting sums that up and adds my conclusions.

After Crown published A Cat’s Life: Dulcy’s Story in 1992, I began to dream big dreams about my success as a writer. In the next two decades, however, as I tried to interest agents in representing my writing, I received only rejection e-mails. Slowly reality dawned.

I realized that the Universe was trying to teach me to let go of the outcomes I’d envisioned. Slowly I learned that I could control the way I responded to events, but I couldn’t control my unrealistic expectations.

Joseph Campbell, who studied, wrote, and lectured his entire life about the power of myth, once said, “Follow your bliss.” I have treasured that quotation. Often I’ve suggested it to others, but never have I truly lived it.

I didn’t follow my bliss—which is simply writing. Instead, I let my dream of being published and becoming successful become an all-consuming obsession. I embraced the outcomes, not the writing. Not the nutritious home-baked bread, but the slathered butter. Not the cake, but the frosting.

Recently a blogging friend sent me a card with the following Campbell quotation on it:

       We must be willing
        to let go of the life
       we had planned.

       So as to have the life
       that is waiting for us.

Her sending that card helped me find perspective and pretty well summed up what many of you have written in your comments for my postings.

And so I begin.

For many decades of my life, I changed, took risks, welcomed differences. If I could do that when I was younger, there’s no reason I can’t do it now. In order to do that, however, I must listen again to that inner voice of intuition I’ve ignored for so long. I must open my heart to that voice.

I’m ready to quit living in the future of my dream world. I’m ready to live in the present and await whatever beckons me. Writing for publication? Perhaps. Finding a new passion? Maybe. Finding books to read on subjects I don’t normally read? Possibly. Working to make daily exercise habitual? Hope so. Making new friends? How wonderful. I know one thing only: I’m letting go of my attachment to the outcomes of my own planning. I’m ready to simply be.

What will this surrender to life look like?  I hope writing will be a part of it, but I suspect that there are surprises ahead for me. That’s something to which I look forward. And yet, I must admit to some trepidation.

Perhaps, those two poles—expectation and trepidation—as well as the span between them are what I’ll be blogging about. Who knows? I surely don’t.

Peace.