To write is to love?

“For me to write is love; it is to inquire and to praise, or to confess or to appeal. Not to assure myself that I am (“I write, therefore I am”), but simply to pay my debt to life, to the world, to other men.  To speak with an open heart and say what seems to me to have meaning.” Thomas Merton, unpublished journal.


Perhaps the snarliest point for me, the knot I cannot unpick, is the "why?" of writing. Perhaps, if I were a more Zen specimen, I would understand the suffering associated with "why?", drop it, and just write. But around writing, my Zen evaporates. Writing triggers me. More than anything else. The whole concept of writing is at once inevitable and irresistable and terrifying. Reading that quote from Thomas Merton (next on my reading list) I am struck by these words: ... Not to assure myself that I am. (I write, therefore I am.)


I've had moments of wisdom around this idea before, like in this blog post, Everything Matters a few months ago now. Those moments are fleeting. I get clear and still and everything makes perfect sense. Perfect sense. And then a cloud of murk descends and I'm wrestling and punching inside heavy blanket in the dark. Wrestling with the exact same things I was so clear about yesterday.
 
Since New Year's Day I have been meditating, sitting in the Proper Position (finally, I can't keep on trying to beat the system by doing it lying down under a cosy blanket) for 15 minutes. This is first thing before I speak or greet the dog or have tea or open any electronic devices. It's a very fresh time. And still my mind is busy racing around, designing gazebos for summer lounging, reaming out the doctor for being so slow with specialist referrals, inventing catastrophes for me to endure and overcome. It's all a big cartoon show in there. I manage, in the 15 minutes, a few conscious silent breaths. The miracle is that I can actually sit for 15 minutes and not squirm. I can watch the thoughts, catch them, and let them go. I am starting to see how much of my so-called "reality" is made up stuff in my fertile amazing magical mind. And I can also see the glorious potential of putting that mind to creative and compassionate use, rather than its stale old boring fearful rerun loop. 

Writing to prove existence is a very heavy idea. Writing to speak with an open heart some truth and meaning, now that's a different story altogether.