Writing
Friday, July 11, 2008
Brightwind is back!
Brightwind returns today! For a long time I haven't been sure where to go with this site. Ever since my mother got cancer way back in 2005, I've had all sorts of ambiguous feelings about what I should do with my life and even more ambiguous feelings about how in the world I could write about it. But now, that ambiguity is just floating away like so many clouds; I've been learning so much, talking to really interesting people, and most importantly rejuvenating my spiritual life through a series of journeys, prayers and meditations. Some of this is very personal of course, but much of it is on subjects I think lots of people can understand and appreciate.
So from now on, I'm going to start sharing thoughts and pictures and whatever comes to mind more. I might do various updates or changes or whatnot, but really my main purpose is that I can keep in touch and share ideas with my friends scattered about the world, who can also leave comments and share their ideas and thoughts too!
The few minutes you spend here on Brightwind should be very bright indeed, I hope, though not necessarily very windy.
Friday, April 09, 2004
Excellence
I learned something about myself yesterday, and maybe something about human nature, too: putting your heart into something is what makes it meaningful to you.
As you already know, I have recently become a graduate student at Nanjing Arts Institute, and so far I’m enjoying it tremendously. Whenever I go there, I feel as though I’m soaking in a special kind of air, breathing in creativity along with oxygen, nitrogen and whatever else. It’s a place specially created for developing artistic talent, skill and inspiration—and it does just that.
I found that as I went there to study and absorb all those new experiences more, teaching at my Chinese high school began to seem older and less interesting. When I came back from my most recent trip, teaching English seemed almost unbearable, and I was filled with a desire to quit as soon as possible.
Then I realized that the high school itself hadn’t changed at all; my attitude towards it had. I let myself begin to think of it as an “old” thing and stopped wanting to try hard at it. In fact it was trying hard to be a good teacher all this time which had made it interesting in the first place. If I didn’t put any heart into this or any other part of my life, that part would certainly deteriorate into meaninglessness.
So now the challenge is to look at whatever I do with the knowledge that somehow just doing my best at whatever it is can really give it a life that it would never have had on its own. This website, for example, can only begin to transcend itself and become something more than just kilobytes on a hard drive when its author spends something of his heart on it, and uses some special love in the writing, a magic which belongs to his soul alone.
Perhaps this magic is a natural love of excellence itself. It can make any daily activity we undertake worthwhile and holy to us. Even if something seems to be meaningless at first, the act of doing our best at it can lift it into the realm of sacred work.
With that spirit, I ought to clean my apartment!
Photos • Yunnan • Way of Life • Writing • (45) Trackbacks • Permalink
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
Writing in the Mirror
Everyday, we stand in front of a mirror, and we examine our faces for new deficiencies of various sorts. We try to heal them or cover them up, and we hopefully leave home satisfied with our appearance. Ideally, this activity gives us a sense of physical readiness and lets our minds get started on the other activities of the day.
Yet, when we go to bed, we just cut off our experiences of the day, like raw meat, ideas and feelings bleeding all over. Our dreams often have difficulty digesting this and making sense of it.
Writing can help us prepare for our dreams, just as the mirror prepares us for the day. We may not remember what we dream, but we will almost certainly go into it prepared. We can see before us the ideas we carry into that hidden world, and find in them a reflection of our souls. This process of reflection, which writing helps us ignite, cooks the experiences of the day into a fully digestible meal. Our dreams spread its lessons throughout the whole body and soul.
The problem for most people is that they think that they always have to write something really good. They may feel shy about writing down their deep feelings and thoughts. Of course everyone wants a finished article or story to communicate something special to readers, but we must first give ourselves permission to just communicate with our own souls as easily as we do with our own faces.
In these moments of utmost privacy, we may find that writing is more like listening than it is like speaking. We simply record the voices of our soul, our experience, and our life as it was today. From the image of who we are when we go to bed, we may have a better idea of who we want to be once we wake up.
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