Lately, I feel like I am living in a parallel universe. I have not written a word on here for a considerable amount of time, and yet my stats have been exploding these past few months. There was minimal activity from readers on my blog at the peak of my creativity and now that I have not written for so long, I have people from all over the world reading my posts every single day and lots of them. How does that make any sense? Maybe there is a lesson in there; someone, somewhere is trying to tell me something. Could it be that I needed to go through this period of creative barrenness and anonymity; a time where my wellbeing and sense of gifting and creative flare was not reliant upon how many likes or comments I received for every post I wrote?
I remember writing previously about how even death has a purpose, how even dead leaves on the ground serve to nurture future new shrubs and trees. So, if nature is so incredibly resourceful and infinitely wise, it figures that we, the human race, as a fundamental part of the natural world, will also serve a purpose even as we die. The death I speak of is a figurative death, it is the death of the Self, of the ego. What could be more effective in generating life from death creatively speaking than to let the creative outlet run dry, inert to the point where all interactions between writer and readers subside to a complete halt; to the point where not even the author has a desire to revisit old posts or check in every now and then? Who in their right mind would wish to revisit the source of the complete annihilation of their creative self, the grounds where once that Self excelled and shone with confidence, wisdom and craft but now there are only echoes of failure on so many unwritten pages that could have been? I am trying to understand, give sense to this period of unending draught in my writing; this heart-rending ongoing lack of inspiration, and the only explanation that makes any sense is that everything around us and in us is ephemeral or at least needs to undergo a periodical process of death and renewal in order to shed bad habits, deadweight, misconceptions that hamper and obstruct the free, organic flow that making art invariably requires. Somewhere along the way my writing got contaminated by the dos and don’ts, the what ifs, the fear of saying too much or perhaps too little. I was too much in my own head, so intent on seeking perfection and praise that I stopped sharing and showing my soul in its purest form. Trying to be all things to all people was never the optimal path to freedom and fulfilment. I should have known better!
The death of the creative Self, however, is not the only depleting force that has dominated my life as of late. They do say that when you lose someone very dear to you, a piece of you dies with them. I have most certainly experienced this to be undeniably and achingly true. The death of your own child is inconceivable, impossibly devastating for sure, but I think many of us underestimate the effect of losing a or both our parents, especially when you lose both within days of each other. Our children are where we are going, an extension of ourselves. Losing a child must be like our own life, our future has been cut dramatically short. And yet our parents signify where we came from, for many of us they simply constitute a third of our entire life, indeed, the most important part during which we form our convictions, our morals, our dreams, our standards for each and every goal we pursue for the rest of our lives. What happens to trees when you sever their roots or to a vessel when conditions turn adverse the further it sails away from the safety of the harbour? Like a grand statue that sits proudly and commanding, we lose our balance, our North, our raison d’etre if and when that sturdy, solid pedestal that holds us firmly in position and gives us a stable perspective gets taken away from us forever.
Since losing my parents three years ago (even acknowledging it was three years ago already fills me with unbearable emptiness) I feel naked to the world, exposed. My roof as well as my foundations have been pulled away from under me. Vulnerability engulfs me like a tortoise without its shell. I am sure my readers are sick of me sharing about my grieving process, but if I am completely honest, having finally resurfaced from the ashes, literally and figuratively, I do not give a damn about what people may think reading what I write. I honestly do not. I know who I am: the good, the bad and the ugly. I do not care for stats, followers, popularity or even validation of my writing. None of it matters one iota any more. Social media is the biggest farce of the 21st century which has primarily served to make the human race even more self-centred and void of empathy and altruism than it ever was. Social Media is the intrinsically flawed and irreparably doomed pedestal upon which so many of the current generation have mistakenly built their sense of identity, their dreams and hopes, and just as it happens when falling in quicksand, it will eventually overpower them when faced with the reality of this new all-consuming monster that encases and owns them, rendering them unable to tell where the quicksand begins and they end.
The Inner Voice 