Stray Cat Resolution

I suppose I have a tendency to proselytize. Thinking back on the writing I've been doing lately, it really irked me that I was holding each entry up to the articles I used to write. All those posts of guidance.

I don’t know where this belief came from that my words need to lead you somewhere in order to be valuable. But it undeniably shapes the way I write….if you get something out of my writing it must be a lesson, or an insight. There's got to be a point.

It extends to my art, too. There's a thought that usually starts interfering at the conceptualization stage: My art is valuable if it inspires in you an emotion, a shift, a remembrance. Better make sure it does that, Raven.

Okay, I know this is utter garbage thinking. And yet it's there.

I have a compulsion to offer something intentional. Though I don't need to know that you got something, or what you got, thank goodness…it's enough to be carrying around this belief without also needing to be validated.

Almost every time I sit down to write a little script starts running in the background: What can I give? What would they want to get?

Hold that thought.

Yesterday I was driving and letting my mind wander. I remembered a stray cat slinking across the road in the quiet night at the moment I looked out the window. I remember feeling envious. There's a freedom in being alone, in the dark, unmatched by almost anything - except maybe being alone, in the day, surrounded by wilderness in a high wind. Have you ever felt the wind go right through you and clean out everything but the wonder?

I remember wanting to share this memory, this line of thought, and it felt so much better than the way I've been pounding my head on the desk lately. Wondering what I would write. Trying to figure out what I could give. Forcing myself to bend a story into a neat little loop that would ensure these words were valuable.

I've been missing the important distinction between actually being of service - being "valuable" - and being a martyr.

So I guess February 28, 2021 is as good a day as any for a resolution.

I'm not going to give you my advice, insight, or words of wisdom anymore. At least I'm really really going to try not to.

But I will share.

Giving is generous, but not when it has the undertone of charity. Or martyrdom.

Sharing says: This is important, and while you can't take it from me, you can borrow it, make your own experience, and both of us will have gained something new. 

I'll end this by sharing with you that I keep thinking about that cat. Where it was going. Whether it loved the smell of Spring on the warming evening air. If it felt as free and wild as I imagined it did.