Fishing, Coping Mechanisms, Belonging, and the Firefly
A friend wrote yesterday that he is used to feeling odd, out of the pack. I have been thinking about this ever since. We are pack animals, and to feel outside the pack is heartbreaking.
The other day I was listening to Dr. Mark Hyman on his podcast The Dr’s Farmacy talk to Dr. Todd LePine on an episode called “Why Fixing the Gut is the Key to Healing Chronic Disease”, and Dr. LePine was talking about skin, how skin is continuous from our face to our tongue to our alimentary canal out our butt. We are all of a piece.
I think we are like this with the pack, too. We are all of a piece. It’s just that sometimes we can’t see it or feel it.
We think we can separate the face from the guts, but we can’t.
When people come to me with their writing and ask me to coach them, I think of a little kid offering a drawing to a parent. We are so innocent, and our innocence is no more clear than when we create. When people ask me to look at their writing, I also think of what happens when the child first extends a creation to a parent or a teacher and receives criticism or no attention at all.
This I see as a crisis point. It’s like a firefly lighting up for the first time and the universe throwing water on it. “Dim that light!” The firefly then spends the rest of its days as a fly.
I am thoroughly convinced that creating is not about quality. Who is this judge that decides what good is? What beauty is? Women all over the world are miserable because their face does not match some conventional idea of beauty. I understand men agonize over their faces, too, but rugged buys men a lot more wiggle room than it buys women. And the whole idea of conventional beauty is ridiculous. Imagine if as we hiked the Appalachian Trail, the rocks and grasses wept and moaned because they were not as beautiful as their neighbor. That path would be a hellhole of grief, and it would be more rewarding to hike down the center of the 405 in Los Angeles. At least then you could try to spot people snorting cocaine as they drive to work. (I know I am dating myself. It has been a long time since I lived in L.A.)
I am writing this morning in one of my favorite writing spots, Espresso Love, in Edgartown. I wrote some of my book here, and recently sat here with Cheryl and Lorna as we worked on our own projects, still triumphantly wet after diving into the cold ocean. I started to talk to Nick, a young man who said the breakfast sandwich he’d just eaten was so delicious he didn’t want to move. He showed me pictures of tuna he’d recently caught, and this got me thinking about fishing, about how incredible it is that a person can sit on the skin of the water, drop a line, and, with patience and faith, bring in a fish.
What if we are all fishermen, fisherwomen, fisherpeople? What if life is about looking out at the vast sea, no sign of life visible, and knowing that, beneath the surface, amazing things are happening that we can bring into our boats, things that will feed us, keep us alive?
When you feel outside of a pack, it’s not uncommon to develop coping mechanisms because you have forgotten that magic waits for you below the surface. It’s not uncommon to rely on drugs, food, deviant behavior to take the edge off the pain of believing you don’t belong. The trick is that coping mechanisms can easily turn into layers of Saran Wrap, invisible but strong, between you and the other. Separation is painful, and the belief you have to go through life alone because there is something inherently wrong or strange about you is inhumane.
I think my writing has gotten stronger in the past year (note I did not say better) in large part because I have made it a daily practice and, like scales on the piano, repetition is another word for magic (thank you, Kent Bond, for that idea), but I also think my writing is stronger because, one by one, my coping mechanisms are falling away. I don’t compulsively date, overeat, overspend, overworry. Instead, I spend a lot of quiet time doing not much at all. Being in a body. I also have developed a clear vision of my future: I want to live as a writing coach and help as many people as possible do what someone had helped me to do: finish a book. This want is more than a gentle yearning. It feels like a drive that is out of my control, out of my control in the very best, higher power kind of way. This means that when I sit down to write it’s easier to feel open; it’s easier to get really quiet and let the ideas come through me instead of trying to squeeze them out of some “I should do this” place.
Again, we’re back to pooping. Okay, I’m back to pooping. The fewer unhealthy coping mechanisms I have, the easier it is to open the tube of me and just let the shit come out. I’m not as constricted. Can you imagine if the firefly tried to force its light? Maybe it would explode. As Keats said, “If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all.”
The price of believing you don’t belong is that you wear glasses of not-belonging, and you look through lenses that show you, again and again, the truth of your belief. You see what you see in your head, and it is a mighty battle to shift this kind of vision.
Being a person is so heavy. There is so much to do, to accomplish, to prove. Being awareness is so light—it’s what makes the firefly so special—it has elevated itself from a pest to art because it lights up.
You light up.
You don’t even have to try.
