https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/heart-centered-writing
I find myself relatively quiet of late, turning more to the natural world and to my inner one. Maybe it has something to do with post-holiday blues, winter, the end of one year and the beginning of another. It reminds me of the morning after a party when you face the bright, empty room littered with glasses, plates with crumbs of half-eaten canapes, scarves left behind, a stain on the sofa: remnants of an evening of conviviality that will never happen again. You have memories, you can conjure how it made you feel, but there's also a sadness because it's already fading into the past.
Some of you may follow a Substack account by the name of A Midwestern Doctor. His--I'll arbitrarily call the writer "him" although this person could be a woman--newsletter yesterday affected me profoundly; I felt as if his post was speaking directly to me. The topic was heart-centered writing, that is, coming from a place of openness and empathy rather than, say, a place of righteous indignation. He observed that since 2020 when society split into factions over "health" policies that certain writers whipped readers into an unhealthy negativity due to their state of mind in the writing process. (He also alluded to the possibility that people who openly write about controversial topics are possibility working out unhealed trauma.) This only served to further divide people and make them retreat--the opposite of what you want to do if you are activist-minded, that is, hoping to influence public opinion. The best piece of advice he'd learned when he was younger was that people tend to remember how you made them feel more than what you said. His contention is that in order to attract readers you need certain ingredients: clarity, concision, honesty, and an open heart. If you have something important to say, how you say it, your intentionality, is as crucial as what you say.
It was profound for me because in the past I have admittedly used words like a battering ram against what I perceived as injustice, exploitation, and all the other cruelties visited upon the masses by the ruling class. I was righteously indignant and I wanted others to be indignant, too. I was brought up in a house of rage. I thought anger made me powerful, allowed me to control situations when, in fact, it only served to alienate me from others. The most illustrative example of this happened years ago in a cancer support group at Sloan-Kettering. The therapist-facilitator asked me to come to her office a few minutes before our session. When I arrived, she said: "I see that your heart's in the right place; you have a lot to offer the group, and I want you to be supported, but I think your anger is preventing you from getting what you want. It scares people away." She said it in the kindest way so that I was able to take it in as a helpful correction rather than a criticism. After that meeting I was mindful of how I behaved within the group. I expressed everything I wanted to say, but I said it without anger. One of the most useful things I've learned over time: anger is sorrow with no place to go. It's my experience that people will receive your sorrow more willingly than they will your anger. And the therapist was right: being more open-hearted attracted the support I sought.
I have always been a seeker, but the seeming incompatibility between the spiritual and material worlds confused me. How can you be a spiritual person and fight the system without one trespassing the other? One needs to find a balance which is what I'm attempting to do. I know telling the truth does not require rage. It only requires honesty, stating the facts without accompanying vehemence. Throwing gas on a fire is not a requirement. The cool head, the steady hand, the confident, unraised voice goes a lot farther than hysteria, the tradecraft of demagogues. More importantly, you can tell the unvarnished truth in a way that gives people hope rather than driving them to the oven or open window. No one wants to feel that whatever they do will not make a difference. No one wants to feel that the life they have ahead of them won't be worth living.
A Midwestern Doctor stated that his spiritual teachers emphasized that spirituality is developed by "finding the key areas of life you wish to devote yourself to and dedicating yourself to developing mastery within them." I would add that it's important to develop your mastery to include what will be most useful to others. It's in helping others that we find meaning in life. If I'm inspired to write a book about a rebellious kid born on a meteor who comes to earth to be a dew collector, I better figure out a way to make it relatable to readers who will never leave the earth and have no clue why anyone would want to collect condensation on plants.
I feel like I'm in the bardo now; in Tibetan Buddhism it means the intermediate state, the gap between lives. I'm marinating in a soup of possibilities. Of course, on our way to becoming we stumble and make bad decisions and mistakes, changing directions as we change our minds. That's what life is for. As an old TV commercial for paper towels exhorted: Life is messy, clean it up. But first feel free to make a mess.