“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.”
-Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
I read (most of) an intriguing little book by Parker J. Palmer called Let Your Life Speak. It's a book about calling, vocation and listening as a means to discovering calling and vocation.
Part of letting your life speak is separating who you are from who wish you were.
To give an example: I wish I were more of a technical/visual filmmaker than I am. I wish I could get excited and nerd out about new technology. I wish I cared about the visual style of David Fincher or John Ford. I wish I intuitively understood the difference between different video codecs.
Zadie Smith wrote a great essay about ideal readers and the authors they do not choose (rather, the writing of that author chooses you). She writes of E.M. Forster:
I admire writers who can write for miles, days, pages and pages, but I am not that kind of writer. I struggle to reach page and word counts. When I write, I often skip over a bunch of explication and get straight to the point (or at least that's what one professor said). Am I leaving things out because I assume they are obvious? Am I just too lazy to properly set things up? Is this just the way that I write?
In a similar vein, to go back to filmmaking, I wish I had the compassion of a director like Cameron Crowe or Brad Silberling. I wish I cared about my characters the way that they do. I wish I had that kind of empathy, which is to imply that I don't.
All of this is to say a lot about who I am not--not technical, not obsessed with visuals, not given to torrents of words, not empathetic. I know less about what I am. I think that's where the listening comes in. Or the just doing. Relaxing into vocation.
If I'm hearing correctly, I think my life might be saying that I don't write/create within a social vacuum. Filmmaking is always collaborative and I enjoy that aspect of it. I create with my friends and the quality of the work reflects the quality of my relationships. I used to see that as a liability, because if the relationship fell apart, so would the project. But maybe it's more of a gift than a liability.
What about you? Is there a gap between who you are and who you wish you could be?
To give an example: I wish I were more of a technical/visual filmmaker than I am. I wish I could get excited and nerd out about new technology. I wish I cared about the visual style of David Fincher or John Ford. I wish I intuitively understood the difference between different video codecs.
Zadie Smith wrote a great essay about ideal readers and the authors they do not choose (rather, the writing of that author chooses you). She writes of E.M. Forster:
It happens that I am E.M. Forster's ideal reader, but I would much prefer to be Gustave Flaubert's or William Gaddis's or Franz Kafka's or Borges's. [...] Rightly or wrongly, I feel I get all his jokes and appreciate his nuances, that I am as hurt by his flaws as I am by my own, and as pleased when he is great as I would be if I did something great. I know Morgan. I know what he is going to say before he says it, as if we had been married thirty years. But at the same time, I am never bored by him. You might know three or four writers like this in your life, and likely as not, you will meet them when you are very young. Understand: They are not the writers you most respect, most envy, or even most enjoy. They are the ones you know. (from The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003)I love this idea of writers and readers meant for each other like soul mates. Again, it's not about who you wish you were drawn to but about who you actually get, I mean really get. I can remember having feelings like this whilst reading Jane Eyre, though I'm not sure who I am the ideal reader for. I suppose I wish I were the ideal reader for Henry James.
I admire writers who can write for miles, days, pages and pages, but I am not that kind of writer. I struggle to reach page and word counts. When I write, I often skip over a bunch of explication and get straight to the point (or at least that's what one professor said). Am I leaving things out because I assume they are obvious? Am I just too lazy to properly set things up? Is this just the way that I write?
In a similar vein, to go back to filmmaking, I wish I had the compassion of a director like Cameron Crowe or Brad Silberling. I wish I cared about my characters the way that they do. I wish I had that kind of empathy, which is to imply that I don't.
All of this is to say a lot about who I am not--not technical, not obsessed with visuals, not given to torrents of words, not empathetic. I know less about what I am. I think that's where the listening comes in. Or the just doing. Relaxing into vocation.
If I'm hearing correctly, I think my life might be saying that I don't write/create within a social vacuum. Filmmaking is always collaborative and I enjoy that aspect of it. I create with my friends and the quality of the work reflects the quality of my relationships. I used to see that as a liability, because if the relationship fell apart, so would the project. But maybe it's more of a gift than a liability.
What about you? Is there a gap between who you are and who you wish you could be?
The quick answer is yes and I think that the canyon between who I am and who I really want to be is one word- discipline. The will to act, to make a plan and stick to it as it relates to the things about my life that I want changed. But I guess those are really just the details in life that accent who I am. The are just various ways to reflect myself, but aren't inherently me, just reflections- the what I do's but not the who I am's
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