Be Your Own Sweetheart
It’s February, it’s cold, and the skies are often gray, which are just some of the reasons I’m in favor of doing small things to warm the blood and tend to the heart whenever and however I can. We all benefit from affection and care when it's needed but today I want to speak to what this means for writers. Shifting away from the expectation that someone else will give us what we need or want, can make us more self-sufficient and hardy, which is always valuable. I found that this orientation has another benefit, which is that I think less and less about what others might do or not do for me or their response to what I create.
It's normal and human to want to be loved, which for a writer tends to mean getting reviewed, selling books, receiving awards, and having readers or even fans. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we tend to imagine that if any of these things happen, it means our work is worthy, and we are "good." In my experience, this definition of love/success creates a high bar that many of us won't achieve, and so what might have been a pleasure or a fully realized expression of our purpose, gets tangled up with feelings of failure or the fear that no one understands or appreciates us. You may have felt shades of these difficult emotions yourself. I certainly have. And I see it in my students and it results in real suffering.
It's a process, and it takes a lot of practice, and yet it's worth becoming aware of unconscious hopes and dreams so that we can feel less thwarted and more gratified by what we are creating, regardless of how others respond or don't, since, in the end, most of us are doing this for deeper reasons, aren't we?
So how can we become less concerned about how others respond to our creative work, and in doing so, relocate our attention in its rightful place, within ourselves?
I began my artistic life as a dancer, and of course I appreciated it when I received a bouquet after a performance. And who doesn't enjoy the moment after the evening length ballet when hundreds of roses are tossed onto the stage during the curtain call? As poets, we work in solitude for the most part and our poems and books tend to enter the world quietly, without much if any applause and without other obvious forms of "love." For the most part, we won't hear from readers and there won't be an ovation. But that doesn't mean that the work won't go where it needs to go, touching those it can touch, possibly in beautiful ways. I trust this in part because I have read books that have moved me and changed me and yet I have never told the author or found another way to let them know this was the case. And yet I love those books and teach them and persuade others to find them if I think they will enjoy them.
Every time I buy myself flowers I am, in some sense, remembering that I don’t need someone else to send me roses to mark a milestone or celebrate even a small thing (or no thing at all). I can do that for myself and I can enjoy the moment in my own way, whenever I want.
You can be your own sweetheart in 100 ways and why wouldn’t you be?
What have you been waiting for someone to do for you that you could do for yourself? I hope you will do it this week and enjoy the way such acts symbolize self-belief, which is what we each need to do this work. With this attitude, so much more is possible.
—Holly Wren Spaulding, February 2022