Monthly Archives: January 2015

Show. Don’t Tell.

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“Show. Don’t tell” is the most common advice given to writers practicing their craft. It is essential advice but often difficult to practice. Words are easy. Telling is a shortcut to getting the idea across. But writing is about more than just getting the idea across. We need our reader to feel something, to have an experience that makes for them a lasting change.

“Show. Don’t tell” happens also to be excellent advice for life. It is becoming my directive for authentic, meaningful relationships.

I share my life with an incredible woman who doesn’t realize how incredible she is. We have known each other 25 years. That’s more than half our lives. In that time, you come to understand essential things about each other. You also develop shortcuts and habits in the way you see and tell each other things.

In 25 years, you say “I love you” a hundred thousand times, sometimes without thinking, sometimes as reflex. Sometimes “I love you” makes complicated things easier. Other times, instead of saying the thing you need to say, saying “I love you” lets you off the hook.

I love this person more today than I ever have, but I am trying to say “I love you” a little less. I am trying to put myself back on the hook. I am trying to find ways inside our life to show rather than tell. And when I do say those words, “I love you”, I want to know she understands exactly what I mean. I want her to have an experience that she can feel, some small thing that makes a lasting change.

Terminal.

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Terminal, a poem for Patricia

I am thinking of the night you called, two years ago, sobbing and hysterical with fear, suddenly overwhelmed by the fact of your terminal diagnosis. And as we spoke on the phone, I could feel you were stunned by the silence of your one-person home and how like a graveyard it must have felt. How your mind began flying like a moth trapped inside a tomb. And ever arrogant, I aspired to do one brave thing and tell you how things would go with some conjured sense of certainty. How much braver I would have been to admit right then that I sometimes have nights like this myself. Me, a person with no terminal diagnosis living in a house full of people, still able to pretend the years all belong to me and that I feel them stretch endlessly out ahead.

Three Words for 2015: Love. Authenticity. Flow.

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I stopped making New Year’s resolutions a few years ago. For me, resolutions had become Puritanical slogs of self-deprecation and guilt with an incredibly unhealthy focus on not doing some things I was doing and doing some things I was not. It had to stop. I have no regrets.

The goals I set myself were usually so minor or so divorced from reality that they could not survive contact with daily life. Exercise more. Count calories. Read more. Write more. Weigh less. None of this is helpful in improving my actual life.

And so, I came to the idea of writing a personal mission statement, which I did. It felt good. Rather than a prescriptive list of things to do or not do, habits to be created and broken, the yearly mission statement is a simple statement that helps me recognize and stay focused on my true priorities through the year. The work isn’t managing a specific list of behaviors or thoughts. The work is managing focus so I can constantly make useful choices about how I use my time and where I invest my energy. You can’t do everything. The trick is figuring out what most deserves your time and where you will receive the greatest reward.

And the work of writing my mission statement was useful. It felt good. Then, I read Chris Brogan’s post about choosing three words to carry with me through the year. Three words are precise. Three words can be carried in my head. Three words are handles for what means the most to you and where you will spend your attention, time and energy.

And so, my three words for 2015 are: Love. Authenticity. Flow.

Love because, when things get crazy, it is way too easy to take the people you love the most for granted.

Authenticity because, unless you practice constantly, it is easy to live someone else’s version of your life.

Flow because, more than anything else, I like to imagine things and write them down. I want to do that as much as I possibly can.

And so, without reading my mission statement, you can tell where I am going to place my practice this year. I will try things I have never tried before. I will refuse to do things I have been doing for too long. So yes, it is, again, a list of doing and not doing, except Three Words gives me the framework to evaluate and decide each moment what deserves my focus. I can grow with it and let this become my practice.

I am ready to start a new year and see where it can take me.

Eyes Front

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You do not need to accept the facts of evolutionary biology or believe in the Creator God to understand that your eyes are placed on the front of your face for a reason. We live forward. Our attention must always be forward. And yet, sometimes, we are tempted to look behind. Sometimes we need to look back. Perhaps our attention gets drawn by fear of some unseen predator. Or maybe we get distracted by the gravitational pull of some pursuing regret. Be careful. No matter the reason, you must always know that you can only look in one direction at a time. Pay attention. Our lives are lived forward. Watch accordingly.