How am I showing up in the world and in my life?
Am I living coherently with my internal experience (who I am, my feelings, fears and desires) and what I wish to create for my future?
This is the question I asked myself at the peak of my depression, 6 years ago. And it was writing that saved my life then, and continues to bring me closer each day to living in alignment with myself now.
Yes, I said it! Writing saved my life. And it isn’t hyperbole.
Admittedly, it didn’t happen overnight:
I must’ve been thirteen when I first learned that I enjoyed writing.
There are few muses more inspiring than early adolescent romance to get one’s poetic gears going. Through high school until university, my English and Writing teachers liked having me in their classes more than most teachers did, and that oiled my gears. I was around 20 when it was clear that writing is something that would be a part of my life for some time to come.
When I thought of my life as an adult, or that frightening thing called ‘my future’, I never saw a version of it in which I was not a writer. Everything else was questionable.
Would I be rich? ‘Successful’? Would I be single, or married? (Most likely married, given I was making muses of adolescent romances.)
All these questions were just that: questions.
But as far as writing went, I had no doubt. It was clear to me: I was meant for this. The statement “I would be a published author” stood like a lighthouse in my mind that was otherwise a stormy sea of questions about my future.
But of course, life has its own plans and obligations and so something I was meant for was reduced to the occasional blogpost or poem scattered in university and work notebooks. In the midst of life, a teen flame was reduced to a barely surviving ember.
Clearly, that’s not the writing that saved my life.
So what was the writing that saved my life?
What saved my life was a spree of writing that I started after I came out of an undiagnosed period of depression. This depression lasted from Spring 2014 until Fall 2015, during the last 4 - 6 months of which I battled near suicidal thoughts, and spent my days either sleeping, binge watching Scrubs or crying to my brother for an hour everyday on the phone.
It wasn’t pretty.
Until my 28th birthday, when I decided to start writing everyday (journaling and/or poetry), among other keystone habits: meditation, reading, working out, eating better. This moment was pivotal, and things got better right away.
Which is why I say that “Writing saved my life”, isn’t hyperbole.
This writing spree started in Fall 2015, tapered off briefly when I landed a job, started again in Spring 2016 when I decided to write a poem a day for a whole year, peaked shortly thereafter and stayed at its peak through all of 2017, during which I was filling my favourite A5 Muji notebooks (~180 pages) every 20 days.
At first, I had decided to write a poem a day. During the peak, I was writing 12 - 15 pieces a day. What started as poetry, became more mindful-writing, meta-writing and auto-writing. (There isn’t a single clear label for what was being produced)
Some times it was meaningless drivel, most times it was tapping into some creative source that felt outside myself. I had a monthly journal budget and carried a book & fountain pen everywhere I was. At work. At the beach. And especially, the dance floor.
In 2018 I started building my business and the writing tapered off again. The raging fire that was 2016 - 2017 became a small flame through 2019 - 2020.
But it stayed lit. And it’s back now.
Like Clint Eastwood entering a saloon in the morning after a bad night out. Looking all serious, like he means business. But in reality, Clint is playing a character. It’s the character that mean business.
The decisions to start writing after my depression, and in general to write more — including now! — are exactly that: decisions.
But why would I decide to write more?
I had three main reasons:
The first, had to do with a sense identity and integrity. I told the world I was a poet, but I hardly ever wrote poetry. Just the rare occasion when “inspiration struck”. Writing a poem everyday was my way to close this ‘gap’ I experienced in myself as someone who said he was a poet but was someone who hardly wrote poetry.
The second, was for the joy of the act itself. I enjoy writing, and am happiest when I put pen to paper, or have a blank word doc and blinking cursor before me. It seemed obvious: writing more leads to a happier me. So, better write more.
The third reason, was that I was looking to change something in myself (or grow / develop myself in a certain way, if you prefer that label) and I saw the writing as a means to do that.
I shall elaborate on this third reason, with the recognition that most of us see something in ourselves that we’d like to grow or develop, the belief that writing can help to this end and the hope that my process may be useful to your process.
(A disclaimer: As much as I believe that writing can save your life, I’m not here to prescribe you with tips, strategies, and how-tos. Not for now at least. Who knows what the future holds! :)
What was I looking to change in myself?
On one hand, I realised during my depression that; in simplest terms, I had not asked for and stated my own desires in my life, to myself and to the people around me.
This lack of stating my own desires and needs led me to follow others' decisions for my life, rather than my own, which — long story short! — led me to making life choices (or the lack thereof) that brought me to depression and; eventually, suicidal thoughts.
It was instantly clear to me that I had to learn how to design and direct my life by my own volition. Stating my needs, desires and wishes for my life — even if only to myself! — was a vital part of enabling that design.
On the other hand, in my “work life”, I saw that I struggled with moving business conversations toward tangible applications and results.
Most of my work conversations seemed to be conceptual explorations with lots of creativity and soft talk but that lead nowhere concrete! In essence, I struggled with meaningful closure. This kept me in a professional loop that was marked by feelings of underutilising my potential, and being undervalued in the market as a result of it — among other things. If I wanted to realise my career goal of being an independent consultant, I’d have to correct these. Immediately.
Either way, I had two valuable “data-points”, which I felt were connected.
I saw a parallel between the lack of clarity in my communication, the inability to state my needs, and by extension direct my life by my own design. As far as I was concerned, they were related. But it was a mere observation.
If this observation was correct, I could make a reasonable hypothesis:
Clarity of communication must be co-related to clarity of life direction.
Finally, I had something I could test.
So, what?
I decided I was going to test the hypothesis:
Clarity of communication must be co-related to clarity of life direction.
I designed a simple experiment: By consciously practicing putting across exactly what I meant and wanted to put across in each moment, observing the results, and looking for co-relations between the way I put things across and the way my life panned out, I could verify if this hypothesis was true or false.
The writing was already a means to practice this experiment. Every time I wrote something, I could look at it before me and I could ask myself if I had written what I had meant to write. I could compare the external to the internal and see if there was coherence.
Through a series of events, the experiment became directed equally at my speech.
Where I was once looking at what I had written on the page, I was now observing what I had spoken into the silence. The intermittent writing practice was sidelined for a constant speaking practice. The journaling remained present, but the focus of the articulation was moved to speech and in-person conversation.
It was instantly much harder!
The page gave me a cushion as it was an entirely private exercise. If it didn’t make sense, it didn’t matter. But when the practice moved into each conversation, the cushion was completely gone. At least, there was the mind of another involved, and at best, there were real world consequences now.
Low stakes consequences, like can I smooth talk my way into an upgrade to business class. Or other treats of the flesh, such as free shots of limoncello.
And high stakes consequences, like how’s my tone constructing dynamics with this person. How will that impact the business, project or relationship we are building together. Yes, it can escalate.
Before long, we’re constructing realities!
What’s this have to do with you, dear Reader?
I’m asking you now, what I had asked myself: Is your life coherent with your internal experience, and the life you wish to create?
The way I see it, it’s not a stretch to say that we aren’t so much building / acting our lives into fruition as much as we are thinking / talking our lives into fruition.
Every thing we do in our lives first comes to as a thought. Everything we’ve built, individually and collectively, we’ve built by putting across thoughts & ideas. First to ourselves as thought, then to others in communication, before we actually got to the act of making / doing whatever it is we articulated individually or collectively.
According to anthropologists, the ability to construct shared realities with language is what makes us human! Language is a technology that allowed us to work together and helped us succeed as a species. Stories created shared meaning, identity, the basis of tribes, working together, leading to success as a species. (Check out Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari, Chapter 2 for more on this)
So; if we’ve built so much collectively, and you’ve built so much in your own life one can conclude that we are each already saying exactly what we mean as it is part of how we function as humans. We are putting across meaning clearly in the same manner that a flower attracts bees or a shark hunts: they don’t teach themselves that, they simply are it. It’s part of their nature and requires no intentional practice to perfect.
And yet, as humans, it does require intentional practice to put across exactly what we mean and want. For we are not in fact saying exactly what we mean and want at each instant. Perhaps you are, in which case, kudos! But I know that I for one, was not.
But, what makes it so hard to put across exactly what one means and wants? How does one know if their external expression into life accurately aligns with their internal experience?
How does one live coherently with themselves?
This is where the simple act of writing comes in!
Language gives us a window into how our minds work.
As we put the ambiguous-analog internal landscape of thoughts, ideas, memories, experiences, being, and all it encompasses, into defined-digital external word packets, our choices and arrangements in this act of expression reveal who we are.
The external can be compared with the internal, for coherence or lack thereof. The process and skill that is our expression into life, may then be iterated on, until there is no disparity between one’s external expression and internal experience. At best, one can live in coherence and integrity with themselves. Or at least work toward it.
How is it possible that the simple act of putting something down in language, allows us to align; or make coherent, who we are and how we show up in life?
Answering this question is impossible without understanding the nature of the mind and language itself. So I’m going to leave that for the next post: a trip into the rabbit holes of mind, thought and language as understood from experience and uncovered in the scientific and esoteric fields.
Yes, dear Reader, this is just the beginning. See you in Part 2!
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Recommended reading music: Melodic Techno, Hypnopotamus
Great read,be proud of yourself Vishal your a great soul