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.
