As the Year Turns

How many writers are sitting with their writing tools today trying to squeeze out a ruby? I would guess that most of us have our butt in the chair and are attempting to make something profound happen. Very few of us will be successful. All of us will produce something, even if it never sees the light of day. And that is perfectly okay. People ask me “how do I become a writer?” My answer is always the same: Write. That’s what writers do. It doesn’t particularly matter if you become a good writer. That’s not really for you to determine. Good writing is in the ears and mind of the reader. Some writers never find a readership that passes judgment. Myself, for example. This bloggy thing is read by only a handful of people, but I have earned my living as a writer for most of the last twenty-seven years, so I have developed some kind of competence over that time. My fiction has been published and so have some of my poems. My songs as well. Some of that stuff is pretty good, most of it is meaningful only to me. But that’s okay. It is the work and the working that counts.

My being able to make a difference is extremely important to me, as it is to most people. I think most people want to affect their environment in meaningful and positive ways. I wish I could say that we all want peace, and maybe we do, but we want it on our own terms. From that comes conflict and that is the nature of Nature. Conflict happens. It is intrinsic to our condition. We are isolated by skin and sinew.

What we learn to do to approximate peace is negotiate. I am willing to cede this to gain that. When the balance comes we call it win-win. But we still must all live with the facts of natural selection. Darwin was mostly right. Does a puma negotiate with a fawn? Only in the most esoteric of ways. Predation as part of the symbiotic energy cycle is not war, it is The Way It Is. War is a Human thing, obviously, and it comes when negotiation and compromise are cast aside.

Welcome to History. I don’t think the world will look back at 2008 and notice much. They will notice that a person of color, of both Caucasian and African heritage, was elected as President of the United States. Will that be a big deal in a hundred years? Hard to say. It depends a lot on what happens in 2009.

My challenge to myself is to make a difference, in some small way, every day in 2009. How that manifests itself could be any number of small things: a smile, a courteous gesture, a good deed, a profound use of imagination, whatever. That old bumper-sticker comes to mind: practice random acts of kindness. Focus on the good stuff. It’s been proven again and again that focusing on the negative calls more of it in. Stop that!

We must accept Nature for what it is. We can change that only by our behavior as a species. The only way to accomplish any change at all is through our individual behavior. When it multiplies in a positive way, we’re golden. The reverse is also true, which is why I make the choice to stay positive and count my many blessings. Down that road lies a negotiated peace.