I’ve been winning for a month. Or nearly a month. When you win it’s hard to keep track of how long you’ve been winning. It’s easier to count the days slip by when you’re losing.
Are you winning?
We all seem to have something inside us prodding us to do something. The something is different for each one of us. Maybe it’s music. Maybe it’s film. Maybe it’s cooking or dancing or painting or sewing or reading or praying or humanitarian aid or jogging or karate. But it’s something. And we feel like it’s our thing to do. So we make plans, set goals and sit down to do our thing. And then, as we approach the starting blocks, it fizzles out and dies.
We feel tired. We feel angry. We feel depressed. We feel like we’re no good a it. We feel like we’ll never accomplish anything. We feel resistance.
My thing is fiction. There is nothing I like more than a good story. I’ve wanted to create my own for as long as I can remember. I’ve had fleeting successes, but I’ve never really been a winner. Until this month. I’m winning now. Every single day. And I think I know why. Shall I share?
Know the Enemy.
There is something insidious that works against anything good, creative or beautiful. It seeks to destroy, inhibit and pervert anything happy and alive. Steven Pressfield calls it Resistance. Theologians call it Sin. I’ve come to call it Hate. I call it that because of the way it rails and bites and spits with no goal other than destruction. Have you felt it? When you sit down to write your story? When you wake up early to start your spiritual disciplines? When you think about putting on your jogging shoes? It’s relentless. It’s evil. It makes you hate your thing. It wants to take you down.
Once I realized it, I understood that every excuse I made for not doing my work was rooted in Hate. And every time I accepted those excuses, Hate won. And my thing was not created. Hate wants all things creative to cease. It’ll do anything it can to kill them. When you know the enemy is there, you realize that every step in the right direction is war. You realize that sometimes you have to work even when you’re hurt (emotionally, mentally, spiritually, physically). Because Hate is always crouching at the door, and it’s desire is to destroy you and your art.
And once you see the enemy, you accept that you must kill it if your thing is to live. And you can take the old Aiel purpose and make it your own: “Till shade is gone, till water is gone, into the Shadow with teeth bared, screaming defiance with the last breath, to spit in Sightblinder’s eye on the last Day.”
Know the Ally
Hate stands against you and your work. Love stands with you. Love, the greatest virtue, is primarily a spiritual and creative thing. Love always builds. Love delight in existence. It was for Love that God made the world. It was in Love that he put a part of himself in every human. And, through Love, we can create and achieve.
All good creativity comes from the Outside. Its root is divine. And when we realize that it is not born within us, but outside us, we see that we can beg for it. We can reach out to the Creator and ask him to send a Muse to kiss our spirit so we can go forward and do what we were meant to do.
And Love, of course, is stronger than Hate. For Love is, foundationally, something. While Hate, foundationally, is a non-thing. Love tends toward order and peace and life and existence. Hate tends towards chaos and violence and death and entropy.
With an Ally like the Creator, how can Hate win? With Love we can trample the brats of hell under our feet and give to the world whatever gifts we have to give.
And so I am winning. And I shall continue to win. And one day you will see the fruits of my victories.
When will I see yours?
Do you know what it’s like to sit alone and free?
To have before you every tool could could possibly need?
A handful of high-quality pens.
A pretty pad of yellow paper.
A computer that rivals Deep Thought.
Even a clunky old typewriter from Goodwill, complete with upper-middle quality paper.
Peace and Quiet.
The knowledge that you will not be disturbed for hours to come.
Complete freedom.
Only to see that you have bound yourself.
An address to the choking chains:
Ho!
From where did you come?
I did not see you before!
Chains: Nevermore.
Me: Your ham-handed reference frightens me, though it hardly seems to fit.
Chains: What do you expect? I am choking out your wit.
Me: This I see clear. And your childish rhyme makes it all the clearer. Begone! I sit in my time of freedom.
Chains: And I seek to steal it from you.
Me: Why? Does my suffering bring you profit?
Chains: Nay, for I have no true existence to be profited.
Me: Then are you sent by a higher power to hinder me?
Chains: Nay, for I am so very low that the High Things always distain to deal with me.
Me: Then what are you? Answer me!
Chains: I can only gives answers in my native tongue – silence.
Me: That is no answer at all! At least no reasonable answer. For it implies you speak silence – an oxymoron if ever I heard one.
Chains: Nevermore.
Me: Again with that awkwardly inserted yet deeply frightening reference! What mean you? For the black bird spoke it to drive home the permanence of the loss the protagonist had suffered. Why have you spoken it?
And here the chain only rattles against itself. And I take hold with my left hand to settle it.
A thought: The chain, or course, cannot give up its secret or purpose. Neither can it bind or free of its own power. No. For it is a non-thing. Without power. And so I must find its source. The chain master.
So with my deft left I feel the sordid, lack-wit chain in the dark. And I follow it, aiming for its mighty source. How does it feel?
Long
Cold
Angry
Unliving
Unfeeling
Bloody
Guilty
Ashamed
I stop, for I have reached an end. I have found the source.
A hand.
I hand gripping tight. Callous and cold. I try to pry it off. But I cannot.
I grasp the wrist.
Arm
Shoulder
Neck.
Suddenly I feel warm fingers on my throat and a sickening truth shines in my mind.
I hold the chain.
Matt W Cook 