Reflections on a plane
The view from the Dash-8 was of an endless, undulating plain of grey clouds, pock-marked with darker shadows and touched by gold from the setting sun. I had time to sit and think, since the plane’s engines were too loud for an iPod and I’d packed all my books in the hold luggage. There wasn’t room for Thomas Keneally’s hardback Schindler’s Ark in my laptop bag.
I’d had a long conversation with my mother a few evenings earlier. I was still considering it as I stared out at the marbled surface of the clouds. It wasn’t like me to feel comfortable discussing writing with her; it turned into a display, an attempt to prove that I could do it, and that it was possible. In fact, there’s almost nobody with whom I ever do discuss the fears and doubts that come up around writing.
Then there was that conversation with her. I said I felt an incredible resistance to doing it. In fact, the last two and a half years of personal development, reading, goal-setting, meditating, studying and Holosync was all about dealing with a powerful subconscious resistance. It’s hard to describe, and it’s not a situation with which I’m familiar.
My mother remarked that I never normally experience these kinds of problems. My life has been spent doing difficult things easily, she said. This is true – although I’m sure I’ll sound like I’m boasting. Generally, my life has been characterised by a rapid, instant decision to do something, followed by taking action and success. Writing goal statements, working out my “strengths” and my “life purpose” felt like needless faff when I could get a new contract in a day and never have to interview.
It’s a characteristic some people – like my mother – finds disconcerting. Two years ago I moved home, and my mother helped. She harangued and harangued about money, my life, my choices. This was the old version of my mother, of course. At one point, she reduced me to tears in the kitchen and I could only stand there, shaking while she berated me for whatever it was I’d done that she didn’t like.
Suddenly, the phone rang. It was an agent about a contract. Tears evaporated in a second and I was doing my patter as though nothing was wrong.
The problem hasn’t been so much limiting beliefs, or lack of confidence. It’s some kind of resistance to it actually happening or doing anything that might allow it to happen. It’s subconscious, and an instant reaction that can be both extreme and melodramatic. I’m embarrassed to admit it’s put me in hospital before, it can be that extreme. I’m not even sure exactly what it is, either. It seems ridiculous to me that the one thing I’m driven to do compulsively – write – is the one thing that some incredibly recalcitrant mental programming is determined to stop me doing.
Two years ago, seeing a counsellor myself, her only recommendation was to “give up”, to cave in to whatever was acting up inside me. Over the years, I’ve tried everything from “just doing it anyway” through “embrace your fear” – if it is fear that’s the root of the problem. Frustration worsens it; I’m not used to putting clamps on myself like this, and my inability to identify what this is or why it’s been so persistent hasn’t made it any easier to handle.
So far, the most effective approach has been to “meet myself where I am”, over and over again. My life for the last year or so has been incredibly fraught, not knowing whether I’m going to have money the next month – or even the next week on some occasions. I’d learned to cope by being in a state of constant semi-meditation. Reminding myself to relax, to stay present to the moment, to “now”, as a means of being open to what might come up. You never know when things might change.
Staring out of the window of the plane, darkness fell as we flew low over the trees into Bristol airport. I was still thinking all this over, aware that even thinking about it triggers the clenched fist around my heart, the inner screeching “NO!” that has been bothering me so much. I will just have to work around it, I thought, and hope that it fades as I keep on going. One thing I do know is that I’m not giving up.
