Certainty v. Clarity
Elizabeth Strout, who is best known for her novel Olive Kitteridge, came to speak at my local bookstore. I bought my ticket quickly because she is a bigshot in the book world and the event, already moved to a larger venue, sold out fast. One thing that surprised me during her Q&A was how often she shrugged her shoulders and said “I don’t know”. It was very endearing and I loved her honesty and humility. She did not have all the answers—even about her very own book, her writing process and the characters she created from her own imagination.
As someone who suffers from anxiety, I crave certainty. I want to know THE answer—especially to the question, will everything be ok? But the older I get, the more I realize that we rarely have THE answer. We have probabilities, and ratios and “more than likelies”. Will the hurricane hit my house? Who knows? The weather map keeps changing. The wind moves, the moon pulls, and whatever other science-y things happen to change the equation. There are so many moving parts in this world, there is little to actually know for sure (despite Oprah’s promises). And Elizabeth Strout allowed that to be the case. She was comfortable in her uncertainty.
As I am learning to accept that certainty is rare, I am becoming more drawn to poetry. Poetry makes space for the not knowing and leaves things open to interpretations. Poetry provides a space where there is no wrong or right answer. It opens up possibilities to explore and discover and allows us to feel comfortable in the discomfort of not knowing for sure.
I was introduced to poetry when I took a Wild Writing® class several years ago with my teacher Anna Guest-Jelley. Poetry is the foundation of Wild Writing. We begin each class by listening to the teacher read a poem. Then we write extemporaneously (pen never leaving the page) for 10-15 minutes. Poetry is our kindling.
Wild writing is as mysterious as it is grounding. Every time we write, we don’t know what is going to happen. What will come up for us. What path we are going to take. What we will uncover. But in the end we figure stuff out. I don’t know how it happens, but it does. The alchemy of listening to the poetry and then writing is certain—and you know how much I love certainty.
Wild Writing has allowed me to better connect with myself and others. It has brought the beauty of words into my daily life and to feel deeply and live more authentically. There are so many unknowns in life and Wild Writing does not have all the answers. But I have found that the practice leads to more clarity and that is something.
