Am I Writing A Story With My Life?
i'm sitting high on a hill above a bend in the ohio river; the rare january sun is on my face and on the water. i can see kentucky on the other side, rows of white houses on hills, bare trees, a few hopeful steeples. two barges pass each other, one sliding upstream, one down. i can hear the persistent hum of the city at work in the distance--cars crossing a suspension bridge, the downshift of a semi, the creak and the grind of an iron crane unloading a docked barge.
the nude lines of the trees between the blazing river and me are darker even than my wife's coffee. i imagine some lonesom midnight writer dipping his pen toward the slick branches for a deeper blackness, black enough to praise, black enough to ink the soul out in wet words.
i think to myself after a few minutes. the muddy river is a trembling skim of silver milk. i stare into the rippling dizziness and hear a voice: write it down. a cardinal whips through the bushes leaving a smear of red in the air. am i writing a story with my life? are my days pages? my years chapters? it feels that way.
i am born into a particular set of circumstances--not of my choosing. i soon become both protagonist and antagonist in my own life story. a plot emerges that is sometimes lost, often revised. a growing cast of characters takes shape and shifts over time--new breathing, laughing, wounded humans enter my life as others exit.
i befriend, love and betray. i teach and am taught. i come to know remorse. i begin the work of learning to forgive myself and others.
i have discovered that it's vital for me to nurture the inner solitude that allows for space and time to reflect on the pages i've helped write so far with my life. the story i'm writing with my life is full of clues. who am i? what must i do to make my life a true story?
slowly i learn to accept and even love my life story, i grow less interested in trading my story for someone else's. i want to take care of my own story and encourage others to do the same. i want the ability to read my life, and hopefully understand much of it. i don't want to find out too late that i inadvertently crossed out most of the good parts.
when i was younger, i scribbled plans for chapters filled with excitement, exploration, new love, new places, and the wild unknown. i believed just about anything could happen. i wanted to discover my own great adventure and drown there. i wanted bold strokes. i wanted to pierce the din of the world with my own voice.
against all odds i wanted to give the world an undeniable gift of some kind. eventually, as you might have guessed, i had the audacity to begin thinking of myself as an artist. and tangled up in this longing to discover my true place of birth was a ragged prayer i still sometimes toss at the sky. God, i pray, by some miracle, make my life a work of art. -- by linford detweiler, "the art of being"