One of my favourite quotations of all time is T.S. Eliot's "Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still." It's from his poem Ash Wednesday.
I work quite hard at getting this perspective firmly in place in my life — caring but not caring.
My main strategy is to see to it that my contribution to any situation is the very best I can manage, then I leave the outcome to God. I don't run after people, or try to palm things off on people, I have no sales technique, nothing like that; I just do my absolute best work and then step back and leave it up to them.
So, for example, I absolutely know that my books are really well-written, packed with truth and change lives. People all around the world get in touch with me to say lovely things like "Your books have taught me how to live." It blesses my socks off! Perhaps the one I treasure most of all was the reader — a woman on a breathtakingly low income — who had been reading my work over many years, and who contacted me when she was admitted to a hospice to die, to say she had bought all nine of my Hawk & Dove series of novels for her kindle, so she could read them one more time. Honestly, could there be anything to make a writer feel more proud and more humble than that?
But from the very outset I have refused to promote my work, or push myself forward. I care very much about the writing, but I don't care about promoting it and I won't do it. "Teach us to care but not to care. Teach us to sit still." I believe in the way of littleness and the power of hidden streams.
People in positions of status, power and influence always ignore me, count me as nothing (I am of no advantage to them), and I don't care. People who are the recipients of my work find it nourishing and sustaining, and I care about that very much. I just keep on, I don't try to be seen or heard. "Teach us to care but not to care. Teach us to sit still." Of course, you must understand, when I say I don't care, I mean as a discipline, not as a feeling. It has hurt me a lot, over the years, to be ignored and passed over and discounted, and sometimes derided, professionally and within my family (of origin, not the one I raised) and in the church. Sometimes it has felt very sore and painful, and discouraged me. I choose to not care about that as well. Running after the approval and acceptance of others is not what I'm after; my sights are simply set on doing my best and getting it right.
I tried to do this as a mother raising my family as well. As any mother will have discovered, it's an occupation like no other to keep you humble. Not only do you constantly disappoint yourself but everyone else you know thinks you're getting it wrong as well, and they don't usually hold back in letting you know. Philip Larkin speaks for a multitude. Meanwhile, God is silent. You just have to hope for the best and do your best. What else can you do?
In the same way, when I had a little cottage to let — that was my main income for a few years — I took the approach of being for my tenants, on their side. I wanted to be not only fair but also loving, as a landlady. People who live in rented houses are usually poor, as my tenants were. I wanted them to feel that someone had their back in this difficult world. I needed their rent to live on, but I set it slightly the low side of average, and kept it there, and did everything I could to make them feel it was their home, and respond swiftly and effectively to any problems. I cared about them, but I didn't care about getting the max amount out of them. When rents rose, I sat still and didn't put mine up.
By this means, I relieve myself of the pressure of competition. I don't try to elbow my way to the front, I don't try to do anyone down. I am always willing to walk away from anything that isn't working or any place where what I offer isn't valued. And I always do my best.
Do you have a life strategy/approach that works well for you, or a maxim you always bear in mind?
Today, my items to go are a pair of useless socks, and a chain.
The socks were just a bad buy and had nothing good about them — didn't live up to expectations — and the chain, well, I don't even know how I came by it; I certainly don't want or need it. I'll add it to some other DIY bits and pieces to Freegle as a box of things when I get round to sorting out my tool box in the cupboard under the stairs.
10 comments:
Your comments about your readers comments are genuinely beautiful.
The people who have contacted me about their responses to my books have brought me *such* joy! x
As you well know your books are very treasured at this end and read and re- read xx
How we met, isn't it! You wrote to me asking about my books. So many lovely friendships and connections have come to me that way. x
Many years ago I had a near death experience and this thought popped into my head “Nothing matters and everything matters.” My life motto.
Love you’re books! I read about them somewhere online and had my local library get them.
Thank you — I'm so glad you like them.
I have come to consider near death experiences as one of the most powerful and telling ways of gaining insight into reality in its complete form. They change people, and they are very conducive to inner freedom.
That's a good motto.
What a timely post. Yes, it certainly hurts to feel ignored and excluded especially when it happens in a church community, but the silver lining is that adversity gives you the gift of knowing who your real friends are. Your description of being a landlady also brought a chuckle. We rent out our basement to a young man who does odd jobs for us in return for reduced rent. We have formed a good friendship and I think he enjoys having personal space after so many years of rather unsatisfactory house shares and couch surfing. Always enjoy your posts especially the daily accounts of your journey towards more minimalism. Each day I look forward to seeing what will be leaving your abode and the reasons behind it.
I think what you describe (about your basement let to a young man) is how things ought to be. In the 1970s we had this massive upsurge towards each adult owning their own home, and away from multi-generational homes and families taking lodgers. Since then, the increase in capitalist political trends (which work like a Ponzi scheme concentrating money at the top and sucking it out of everywhere else) are steadily spreading and deepening poverty, and the increase in homelessness and decrease in affordable housing has returned us to house-shares of various kinds. I am no big fan of concentrating wealth, but I do like the shared homes. I think it's healthy and creative. Like the psalmist says, "He setteth the solitary in families".
I like your thoughts here. I am a Christian author too, and what I do (like you) is send my books out in to the world. Jesus is powerful, he steers the right people to our books. One thing helpful for me is I belong to a Women's Bible Study group at church, on Zoom now and meeting in person again starting July 4 here in California. We encourage each other to live as Christians.
Ah yes — finding one's tribe and travelling together — such an encouragement!
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