(from a talk at Aquinas College on September 26, 2024)
Humility has in modern times acquired a negative connotation. Like meekness, humility smells of a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, a cowardice even. But the humility that comes from the inspired clarity of ourselves is one that considers a proper measure of both our talents and our limitations, our strengths and our deficiencies. Humility is, like mental health, an equilibrium, a delicate balance of acceptance of the things we cannot change and the courage to change those we can. Humility is, simply, truth and mental healing begins with an obedience to truth, to the reality of our life, both the interior and exterior reality. Through the years, I have grown to accept the bipolar disorder that will always be with me, but which gratefully is under control through medication. But the acceptance of that reality does not mean that I must see myself as a victim or to stop seeking ways to respond to the inspiration to bring something new into the world. The biggest sign of healing from the pain of mental illness occurred when I was able to “de-identify” myself from the symptoms of mental illness. I was neither the grandiose character created by manic states nor the worthless creature presented by depression. The recognition that we are not the thoughts or the images of ourselves produced by mental illness is the window that opens to healing.
What amazes me about the phenomenon we call inspiration is the interplay, the correspondence that exists between how accurately I see myself and the impulse, energy, ideas, images that seem to come from outside. If I’m too puffed up about myself or too deflated, I end up in a kind of dry paralysis. Henry David Thoreau says that the young man starts out wanting to build a castle and ends up living in a shack. I have gone on to write ten more novels since that first novel thirty years ago and always, always, I start off imagining a castle or at least a mansion a la Downton Abbey. Perhaps it is too severe to call this energy “false”. This initial blast can indeed be like the booster rocket that sends the capsule with the working astronauts into space, a necessary burst that knows when to detach itself before the whole shebang explodes. When it becomes obvious that the castle cannot be built the choice is either to quit or to continue with the construction of a shack- a shack that will be yours and which may, after all, provide a measure of refuge to others. What I know for sure is that the energy needs to be readjusted into something usable, something that can sustain effort over a long haul.
It seems so countercultural and even a little un-American to talk about letting go of the ambitious mansion and settling in to build the shack. Bigger and more and best are values from our competitive society that have made their way into the world of writing fiction along with the demands for self-promotion in social media. But . . . to create works that are true to the values that guide my life, to connect what I do to what I want to live for, is what I mean by honest writing. The shack, that Thoreau says we end up growing into. Honest writing does not mean that I abandon a search for excellence as I write. I give the work all I got, guided as I go along by a sense of what I perceive as the truth and beauty called for by that work. Honest writing means putting aside, to the extent possible, concerns for what will happen after the work is done. As I write there appear places where the plot or the character can go one way or another and I have a choice of looking outward for future approval or staying inward until I find a resonance with a way that is true within me. This “resonance” that one learns to feel over time is so amazing. You recognize it as a truth that comes with confidence and power and peace.
