I have carried with me a desire to create from the moment my mother taught me to hold a crayon. From that day on, I would draw every chance I could, on every scrap of paper my father brought home from the printing press at which he worked. I was not innately talented, but I loved seeing my imagination come to life in all the colors that shipped inside those cardboard boxes with built-in sharpeners. Most of all I loved watching my mother draw, she was naturally talented. She still is, stitching flower bouquets, that never existed anywhere else but her mind, onto cloth. Back then her creativity was restricted to the same paper as mine was. I would watch intently as her hand deftly drew petals that gave way to fields of flowers, single trees that turned into forests, and tiny rabbits that became the vanguard of a vast menagerie. I was confident that someday I too would be as good.
My efforts to improve my drawing skills continued until I was in the fourth grade. That is when I fell in love with a different form of art. C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew not only made me fall in love with the written word, it opened my eyes to the worlds a writer’s brain could create. I had not yet realized that those worlds were in no small part being created by my own as I read. At the time, I believed Lewis had put a marvelous universe in my imagination through his writing and I wanted that power too.
I immediately started writing a, quasi-plagiarized, fantastical tale involving talking animals, the details of which have now been obscured by the passage of time. I have been writing ever since, with different levels of prolificacy and intensity depending on the twists and turns my life has taken. I did not completely abandon drawing and I even ventured to try my hand at painting in my early twenties. But I was enthralled by the written word and it continues to hold sway over me.
I have had a small but loyal group of cheerleaders over the years; wonderful family members and friends that have pushed me to continue writing, even after being subjected to mediocre romantic ramblings disguised as poetry – the product of some unrequited love that was destined to die in the silence and darkness of my insecure and socially inept gut. I have also suffered my fair share of rejections from gatekeepers I imagined had earned the right to extinguish my ambitions. The value placed on the rejections always outweighing that of the praise. Over time, I no longer required an unseen stranger to cut me down to size. I had become quite proficient at doing it myself; aborting embryonic ideas within a few frenzied sentences. Better my worlds die at my own hand, before they matured and took shape – before I loved them too much – than to see them completed and torn to shreds by one more strange ravenous predator.
By the time I had reached my mid-thirties I was no longer writing creatively. I did journal, hoping it would unlock the mysteries my psyche kept from my conscious mind. All the while, my rebellious imagination continued to create worlds on a regular basis, from the mundane to the most extraordinary, but I would not allow them to occupy space upon the page. I had responsibilities, a wife, children, bills; I could no longer make allowances for childish dreams.
I had responsibilities. I had a wife I did not deserve and treated horrendously. I had children I ruled over like the despotic father I had learned to be. I had bills which grew ever so quickly, as I amassed useless trinkets that failed to bring me the joy, I hoped they would. My life was unravelling as I approached middle age. The more I tried to exert control over my world (the real one, not one of those orbiting within my head) the less I seemed to have. I saw the end approaching relentlessly but at a deceptive pace which made me believe I could stay ahead of it indefinitely. I just had to keep going, nothing else; just keeping going.
Never, as a child, had I been a bigger fool than I have been as an adult. I was forty-four and desperate, grasping at straws within a hurricane of my own making. My wife, my partner and best friend in life, no longer looked at me with the same eyes as she once had, so many years ago. My children seemed to prefer interacting with me in hellos and goodbyes rather than dealing with my mercurial temperament for extended periods of time. It is by sheer luck or maybe providence that I did not lose everything that I love. I saw a counselor who helped me recognize that I was a damaged adult, the product of a damaging childhood, but who was unable to offer me the solutions I needed to fix my life. And then, one day, I randomly came across a quote on a social media post, “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” The second century Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius was credited as having said those words. What was it about that phrase? Why was it so striking? Why did I read it over and over again? What did it mean? I could die… right now.
“What would you do if today was your last day on earth?” I remember my wife once asking me when we were just dating. I gave a halfhearted response, probably something I believed she wanted to hear. I did not see the point in giving the question much thought, why would I tempt fate with such ideas? I had long ago accepted I would die someday and decided it was best not to think about it. The day would come regardless of how much thought I had put into it. I was in my twenties then and the victim of the arrogance of youth. Time has since tempered both my arrogance and youth.
I could leave life right now. The thought grabbed hold of me, and I became afraid. The first sentence of the quote captured my attention, but the second shook me to the core. “Let that determine what you do and say and think.” I could lie and say that I lived as if an infinite amount of tomorrows had been granted to me, but the truth is much more distressing. The truth is I was not thinking about tomorrow and as a result I was not thinking about today.
The startling realization came to me that today is all I really have. Everything could end, today. I can plunge another dagger into my wife’s soul, or I can show her how much I love her. Today. I can perpetuate the cycle of parental dysfunction, or I can be a good father. Today. I can continue to pursue fleeting joy through meaningless distractions, or I can stop being afraid of pursuing that which is meaningful. Today.
I had heard and read about the Stoics before, but I had not given them much thought beyond imagining them as a collection of real-life Messrs. Spock, the unemotional and always logical human-alien hybrid character from the 1960’s sci-fi television show, Star Trek. But that changed after what I now call my “awakening,” and I began to delve into the teachings those philosophers offered. Their writings confirmed what every atom in my being shouted out after reading Marcus Aurelius’s quote: I was born to live until I die. And if I lived in fear – safeguarding that life from pain, hardship and disappointment until the inevitable end came – then it could not be said I had lived at all.
Living involves risking the possibility of every sort of malady that could befall a person. But with that risk also comes the reward of knowing that I took every breath with purpose; I dreamed and attempted to make those dreams reality; I was a participant in the day not just a spectator led to and fro by the whims of external forces. I will not always look upon the product of my actions and say to myself, “I have done well.” I will stumble and fall often, but at least the specter of regret will never again haunt me for not having taken chances. I have agency and intend to exercise it at every opportunity.
It is an amazing time we are living in; the gatekeepers can no longer control the flow of ideas. There is no one who can prevent creative thought from being expressed in whatever form or media it takes shape. That is the purpose of this site, to serve as the exhibition room for all the worlds and thoughts that live inside my head. Some of them might be mediocre, others horrid but there might be a few that someone could consider good. But that does not matter because I am sure of one thing, they will be brought forth into the world to see the light of day and I will create with no fear.
