You’ve Got The Power
They tell me “you’ve got the power”. No, I don’t. I’m here so you can give me the power I need. “No, you’ve got the power.” But I don’t feel it. “You’ve got the power.” Where is it, then? I feel like you’re giving me a New-Age-mantra “you’re so strong and independent, like fucking France.” But I don’t feel that in my bones and that’s why I go from video to video, from course to course, from book to book feeling stupid, cheap, used, dirty and manipulated and what the fuck is wrong with me? If I had the power would I sit there pale as the sheet of paper in front of me, staring at it, gazing at nothing as if I’m looking in the mirror? And them — smiling from the back of their bestselling novels, laughing from the stages that were built to celebrate their genius — I see that they’ve got the power. Their power punches me in the face with the first line of dialog, their power oozes from the big screen in a dark-lit theater, jumps at me from the picture on the wall with a little white plaque reading “Abandon Hope by Someone You Will Never Be”. If I got the power, you all keep talking about, how come I don’t feel it?
Because it’s a skill to trust and believe. It’s a skill that has been misused for so long while I have been practicing the skill of doubt and critique, sitting down to write, facing the crowd, opening my mouth, and telling myself “I don’t have it.” Paying attention to the result and not the process, ignoring the trail of missteps that leads to something worthwhile. Practicing the skill of believing in magical resolving power that they possess, the skill of avoiding muddle at all costs, the skill of mistaking the courage for the lack of fear. I’ve got good at it for I’ve had a lifetime of practice.
And even if my mind is there and I want to believe, my bones won’t let me. I want to enter the Promised Land of Self-belief but my sins hold me back. And all of King’s horses and all of King’s men can’t convince my bones to feel something they have never experienced. This is why the right environment is so powerful. If only one could find the place where it’s impossible to avoid mistakes, where people celebrate mistakes, welcome them, embrace them, applaud them. It’s the environment of acceptance and the safety to fall that helps build the skill of belief.
I only need to practice and embrace my mistakes. Anatoly Karpov said about chess, “In general one has to learn not to lose and the wins then will come on their own accord.” I learn not to make mistakes by making many mistakes. I’m not chasing perfection — for it’s probably a myth — I’m chasing mistakes because they are real. Make mistakes, learn, repeat. There is no magic, just work. But I already knew that, right? I only needed a hundred thousand repetitions to teach my stubborn bones.
Because it feels weird. “You applaud my mistake, really? okay, I’ll play along, let’s sit around a fire and sing fucking Kumbaya next.” But then I catch myself making a mistake with no self-loathing and no self-hatred and it’s almost scary: “who am I? Am I a mistake junkie? Do I like mistakes now all of a sudden, what is happening?” And they force me to make more mistakes and to love them and to embrace them because it’s all about the courage to fall and get up again. And courage is a skill. Courage to believe in yourself, courage to believe in the possibility of growth, courage to believe that mistakes are okay, that everybody makes mistakes, that everybody has my fears that don’t make me damaged or insufficient or not enough. They just make me human.
Of course, I better make the right mistakes, and I better have some framework to detect and correct them, otherwise, the similarly flawed manuscripts will pile up on my desk. But the main aim is to transfer the notion of mistakes’ importance from the intellectual realm to the realm of visceral experience. Until I’m anxious to find mistakes until I can’t eat and sleep before I find why this piece of writing doesn’t work. And I grow, grow exponentially, because that was the truth that everybody was talking about, from New Age bullshitters to kind people who wanted to help: you have the power, you just need to go and make some mistakes.
The timetables are different for different people, though. Some might need only a gentle push and a small dose of practice to break those limiting habits, and some might need much more for the results of this approach to sprout and blossom. We can keep working together, keep practicing, and encouraging mistakes. The day will come when the realization happens: I’m not writing a masterpiece I’m just making mistakes. More complicated, more interesting, more subtle, and nuanced mistakes. And since we all can agree that right now, I’m perfectly capable to make mistakes, there is nothing more I need after all. I do have the power.
first published on my blog
