I saw the movie Wild this past weekend. The book one very dear to my heart. I read it several years ago and have reread it and referenced it more times than I could possibly count.
The first time I read the book, there was something that I absolutely marveled at and I was reminded of it when I saw the movie.
After suffering an enormous loss, the author's life spun out of control. She suddenly became aware of the juxtaposition of what her life looked like and who she felt she really was under all of her pain and grief. She looked in the proverbial mirror and said, “Wow. My life is a fucked up mess and I need to do something about it.”
She was lost. She had broken into 10,000 pieces. She was trapped and paralyzed by her own mistakes, fear, guilt and grief. Then one day, she was standing in a store and saw a book about the Pacific Coast Trail. An answer took hold. She was drawn to it. A gut feeling told her that the PCT would rescue her.
I don’t like to use the words 'hunch' or 'gut' in this situation. It makes it seem like I’m watching NCIS and Leroy Jethro Gibbs has a gut feeling. It’s the Commander in the galley with an envelope full of Ebola. He’s probably right, but he has to prove it. That isn’t the case here. Cheryl knew. She had prophetic certainty that her salvation was somewhere in that 1100 miles. I think all of the lessons she learned along the way are amazing and invaluable. However, the wonder and awe of this story for me is her decision to go, her complete inexperience, and her tenacity to keep going.
How many of us would have stopped to ask “why”? And then analyze our own idea to death, until we effectively eradicated it as an option? (Just me?) How many of us would have tried to figure out how it would change our lives before we left? How will it make me a better person? Who do I want this journey to make me? How many of us would have disregarded our own intuition without a guarantee of desired results?
Thousands of people set New Year’s resolutions this year. As a whole, we idolize our goal driven ideology. We want qualitative results directly correlated to our effort in order to feel successful. I want to weigh 125 pounds. That means I have to lose 15 pounds. That means I have to do this list of things to get to that point. We almost refuse to start something without knowing what we want the outcome to be.
Back to Cheryl (we are on a first name basis – she just isn’t aware of it).
So she gathered up the things she thought she would need, planned as best as she could, and went. This whole thing didn’t hit me in the book until she was in her hotel room the morning she started the trail and she couldn’t lift her pack.
She’s outdoorsy. And not like I’m outdoorsy. I like to sit outside and drink. She grew up in a tar paper home in Minnesota. She wasn’t by any means pampered. She could make fire and stuff all on her own. But she wasn’t prepared for this. She didn’t train. She took gear with her that was completely useless and didn’t have other items she actually needed. She had no actual hiking experience. The day she left she couldn’t lift the pack she carried for over 90 days and 1100 miles.
I enrolled in college in 2008. It was the year I turned 30. Everybody asked me why. Why do you want to go back? What are you going to do with your degree? What are you going to major in? I had answers prepared. I knew they were coming. None of them were true. The truth was, that I woke up on the cusp on
After I received my Associates of Arts, I transferred and started pursuing my Bachelor of Liberal Arts. And the questions started again. What are you going to do with that? For starters, I’m going to avoid shooting myself in the head or dropping out, one of which would be the result in me being a business major as suggested. No one appreciated that answer. I decided to major in Liberal Arts. When anyone asked me what I was going to do with it, I would snarkily answer, "teach." If you haven't figured it out yet, molding young minds isn't something I should be employed to do.
One of the concentrations I chose was writing. Another decision I didn’t question.
At this point, my thought process wasn’t even in the realm of writing for any other reason than academically. It was something I was decent at. Years prior to this, I loved to write. I had given it up. I didn’t have direction. I didn’t have the tools to help myself improve. I enjoyed it. I loved it. I lacked confidence in it. I had lost hope in it. I let it go.
Enter the esteemed Dr. Charles Anderson. I took Nonfiction Writing without having a clue what it was about and I struggled like hell through it. Not because it was hard, but because Dr. Anderson challenged me in that way that makes you obligated to be better. “I know you can do better, Kristin.” Shit. You mean half-assing this isn’t what you wanted me to do? How terribly inconvenient. I didn’t come close to acing that first class. However, I did improve a little. I started to realize I was better than I had given myself credit for.
So, I took another one of his classes. It was something to do with editing. Enter doom and dread. I had that class with Jennifer and Wendy - who I still depend on for writing advice. Dr. Anderson took to calling us the Terrible Trio. He assured us that he meant this in the best way possible, but the word "terrible" implies otherwise
It was an amazing experience. We learned so much from each other through collaboration and playing with styles in that class. I took three fundamental lessons from that class. (Sorry Dr. A – none of them have to do with tropes) I was passionate about this. I could do this well. Editing is just as much a part of writing as writing.
Dr. Anderson recommended I read a book called Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott. This is also an amazing book that is an essential part of my life. There are certain books that I am so attached to they are literally part of my personal ideology. Bird by Bird, Wild, and Harry Potter make up a massive chunk of this collection. Anyway, my second favorite quote in Bird by Bird is this:
“E.L. Doctorow said once said that 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.”
I’m quoting Ms. Lamott quoting someone else. I’ve noticed us writers, my friend Cheryl included, love to quote other writers. We love words, both our own and others.
Writing is such an essential part of my life now. I’m not sure how I ever functioned without it. I had no idea when I enrolled that summer that it would lead me to this. Not knowing got me here.
I realize my story and Cheryl’s have very little in common. I suffered no great loss. It’s been YEARS since my last heroine experiment (I’m kidding, Mom). I'm not 26. Cheryl went on a grueling 1100 mile hike. I started a blog.
Cheryl started her journey broken, unprepared, and totally unaware of where she would end up. She could have quit a million times over. Her journey revealed her to herself. At the end she says, “It was all unknown to me then, as I sat on that white bench on the day I finished my hike. Everything except the fact that I didn't have to know. That is was enough to trust that what I'd done was truth.”
At 30, I started college because I knew I needed to. I had no idea what I was doing or why I was doing it. I wanted to quit AT LEAST a million times over. My journey has revealed so much of myself to me. At the end of it, I still don’t know what my life holds for me in the future. I do know that I have so much more of me than I ever have before, and that is invaluable.
The moral of the story (both of them) is that you don’t have to have all the answers to accomplish great things. You don’t have to be perfectly prepared to find pieces of yourself along your journey. Deal with the two feet in front of you. Write the shitty first draft. Decide to take the journey. Your destination is just the destination. The two feet in front of you is your journey. Let yourself be revealed. Trust what you do is truth. Nobody has to believe that but you. That is what the journey is about.
No comments:
Post a Comment