Briefly

Times of crisis can teach us a lot about ourselves, if we’re willing to pay attention. The coronavirus pandemic right now is a good opportunity to learn from something terrible. A lot of people are scared at the moment and it’s hard to blame them, because it’s impossible to say how much worse things might get and who might be hit. But who do your thoughts turn to right now? Who’s on your mind? Who do you worry about? If you’ll pay attention to these questions — and answer honestly — you’ll tell yourself a lot about who you really love. Even if I can’t protect those few who I worry about, I know where my thoughts are. I know who I wish I could run away with to somewhere safe. I know who I wish I could protect. I know who I love. It’s a good exercise to reflect on this.

There are times, especially late at night — when all is silent except for the beating of my own heart — when I feel my ego become so calm that I feel neither ambition nor fear. In those moments, I know without doubt that I can become successful making the art I need to make. It’s the rest of the day — when I’m surrounded by other people’s voices — that I end up filled with hidden fears that no one will love me if I take chances, when I doubt myself enough to run from the things I feel compelled to do. Quieting the ego and tuning my spirit to something which Carl Jung might have called Collective Unconscious are my best ways to stay on the path toward making the dent in the Universe which I was put here to make. This is what I was getting at in the piece I wrote a few days ago about my need to be a star. As odd as it might sound, that’s faith talking, not ego.

I constantly run across articles I’ve written at different times over the last nine years which I now wish I’d never published. It’s not always even a matter of disagreeing what what I wrote at the time. Sometimes I just wish I had been kinder in the way I approached something. Other times, it seems as though I wasted my time by writing about something that seems trivial. And yet other times, it’s that I don’t entirely agree with what I said then. I have the strange notion that everything I’ve ever said should somehow reflect the person I am today. That’s not possible, because I’m not the same person I was five years ago or 10 years ago. I like to think I’ve grown. So I guess I’ll continue to cringe at some things I’ve written. I hope I’ll keep growing — enough that I’ll cringe in 10 years at things I write or say today.