UNVEILING YOUR STORY

Pay attention, Mary Oliver directs us. That is rule number one in her Instructions for Living a Life. But it is not enough to pay attention. We must be astonished, she commands. Nor shall we stop at astonishment, for that is selling the world short. Tell about it. Tell the story of what astonishes you.

The dough that just this morning expanded up to the rim of its countertop plastic container, filling your kitchen with the yeasty smell of home and something else ancient and yearning.

The pile of ash in your fireplace and the stains the embers left on your hands after you burned the paper proof of lives well-lived and loved.

The bright moon above your sleeping child, a perfect reverse of the pupil of the eye of God. Tell about it. Tell about it all.

Write it down.

As a teacher and avid practitioner of yoga, I know the value of showing up on the mat every day. And as a writer, I know how critical it is to pick up a pen and paper and write every single day. We all know that old saying, “Life gets in the way of living.” All too often, life gets in the way of writing. The way around it is to do the living, and let the writing fill in the blanks.

What happens when we’re so full up on living, there are no blank spaces left to fill? We make excuses.

Too crazy. Too lazy. Too driven. Too unforgiven.

Too tired. Too wired. Too drained and too uninspired.

For God’s sake, people: Shut up and write!!

I think that’s Natalie Goldberg, but it might be Anne Lamott. Since they’re both my writing gurus, I tend to confuse their sage, butt-nudging advice. Whoever said it was right. I added the “people” though, and just so’s you know, when I said “people”, I meant me. These are my excuses, but you know they’re yours too. If you deny it, I will have to call you on it.

When I was five I would have called you Liar Liar Pencil Fire, because that’s what I thought all the playground kids were hollering. Pencil Fire didn’t make any sense, but I went with it. And me hurling “Pencil Fire” epithets at you makes about as much sense as you Not Telling Your Story. Because that’s what we were put on this earth to do — live our stories, breathe our stories, write our stories, tell our stories.

Our stories are our affirmations that our lives have meaning. Our stories propel us, predicate us, float or sink us. And just as nobody else can tread upon that particular arrangement of stepping stones that forms our unique life path, nobody else can give voice to the story that tells of each fork and twist and turn along the way.

Your story is just as much the words you choose as the way you choose to use them. Some spin tales of action – all verbs and motion and to-ings and fro-ings. Others make hard and concrete statements while there are those who can sculpt concoctions of sound and air and linguistic harmony. Call it art, commentary, music; call it Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry. Characters can be stand-ins or composites, and whole events can be utter fabrications. It is all writing, and the writing is both masquerade and its unmasking.

A society’s greatest writers reflect it, at once holding up mirror and pulling off veil. Any writer knows that the unveiling is the hardest part of all. We isolate ourselves inside the literary lives we construct, and whether we hang out alone in our jim-jams all day or take to the streets, at our core we must know that we are // I AM the only person the world will ever know who can give voice to our/ MY struggles, MY triumphs, MY perspectives, MY STORY.

“Do not dare not to dare,” I wrote. “Hold nothing back.

Now

Wait.”

Tell it. Write it. Do the work.

You are going to have to give and give and give, or there’s no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward.

(Anne Lamott for sure, Bird by Bird.)

Sometimes you do have to wait for the universe to be ready to listen to your story, but that doesn’t mean you should waste another second twiddling around. Start telling it. Life will open up a space. Get out of your own way.

As a yoga teacher, this is where I bow to the light in you. I can see it. It is radiating. It is your story inside you. Do not hold it too close. Do not wait too long. Take it out in the world and set it free.