REMOVING THE TENSION

The other day, I was taking a yoga class, and the instructor said, “We want to feel the posture in the body, and we also want the body to be in the posture.” In that moment, as I focused on grounding myself in this balancing posture, I exhaled fully, then slowed my breathing down, repeating to myself on the in-breath and the out-breath, “mind slowing down, body slowing down.” I use these phrases as reminders to tune out the noise. I use them for myself before I start any writing session, when I can’t sleep, when I feel anxious, basically any time when I notice I am not fully in my body.

In this yoga posture, as I continued to breathe and say these words in my head, I was able to tune out everything except for my breath and the sensations in my body. I appreciated the tension in my body and could almost see in my mind the sinews of muscle and fascia pulling, stretching, filling the space, allowing me to both expand and contract to meet the needs of the moment. I felt strong, calm, unhurried, and dare I say, even a little effervescent.

It often occurs to me (usually when I don’t really want to notice it) that how we do one thing is often how we do a lot of things. In this case, I felt a growing warmth in my body as I reflected on that moment in yoga because it reminded me of the feeling I have while writing or creating, or walking in nature, or singing, or developing a manuscript for a client, or even cooking and then eating a seriously delicious meal. When I am fully engaged with my body and mind and heart and soul, I appreciate the tension between seeming opposites, savoring the taste of salty tears juxtaposed with the sweetness of inner wisdom, creating a bittersweet smorgasbord that I want to banquet on for as long as possible. 

And then, as is also often the case, I fall out of the moment into distracted thoughts about the state of the world, the endless list of very important to-dos, a buzz on my phone indicating that someone is calling or texting that I simply must attend to. My embodiment is lost, but only temporarily. I can come back again and again. And I do, or at least I try to. This gives me peace and fulfillment and brings meaning to the corners of my life. But what if I didn’t come back to myself? What if I outsourced my embodiment, accidentally, of course, by trying to smooth out the tension in order to make my life easier?

I see it happening all around me. AI is attempting to give us an easy button for a lot of things, and I’m all for an easy button if it doesn’t sacrifice quality, integrity, and generative creation for efficiency. Am I missing a comma? Did I misspell a word? Yes, I would like the option to review those corrections. (Sometimes, I am choosing a specific phrasing on purpose, though; don’t grammar me out of my artistic choices.) 

The problem I see is that AI is currently inserting itself into the sacred spaces of our lives, like writing and creativity. Maybe writing and creativity aren’t sacred to you, but they are sacred to me. And when it comes to creativity in general and writing in particular, I’m having none of it. 

This is not to say that AI doesn’t have its uses. I think it does, as I said, sometimes efficiency is key, and the easy button is required in our overcommitted lives, but I would argue not at the expense of my voice and the lovely, weird, quirky voices I want to read and experience. Not at the expense of the complex and nuanced relationships I build with myself, my content, and my ultimate reader when I am deep on the page. Not at the expense of the practice I engage in as a ritual almost daily. 

Creating gives my voice a canvas to explore. Writing lets me meander through my ideas, thoughts, and musings, stumbling into truths I couldn’t voice without the exploration. Finding clarity in the muddy waters is a gift that writing provides to me. But I can only receive this gift if I engage in the process. The whole process. This includes the brainstorming bulleted list or bubble map I create for myself when I have the spark of an idea. This includes the questions I ask myself and become curious about, following threads that I am fully aware might lead nowhere, but often lead me right where I need to be. This includes the walks I take while pre-writing happens in my head. This includes the daily writing practice when I sit at the blank page, cobbling together words into sentences and then into paragraphs, just like I’m doing at this very moment. This includes the moments when I feel uncomfortable in my voice and the moments when I feel a flow that stretches beyond my body onto the page, surprising me.

I’ve heard dabblers say things like, “I put my ideas into ChatGPT and asked it to write a blog post for me based on my ideas. Isn’t that awesome?” And then I see the result, and in a word, it is… beige. It is unremarkable. It is bland. It is grammatically correct, sure, but where is the connection? Where is the relationship I look for when I am reading something? Where is the resonance? It’s missing because the elements of the writer’s essence have been removed. The writer’s voice, made up of every experience the writer has ever had, is utterly missing or watered down to such a state that I don’t recognize any flavor. 

I fell in love with books because I could see myself in the story, in the characters, in the voice of the author. I fall in love with the relationships I build on the embodiment of another author’s voice or my own. I want to experience this again and again. I want my brain to explode with possibilities when I find a weird and kindred soul in between the covers of an unlikely tome. I want to linger here with these new friends. I want to be dazzled and expanded by my experience of teasing out the words and ideas as they come to me, blank page smirking as it sees what I’ve created. I want to embody a new state of being simply by interacting with the tension that is created by the act of writing. When we smooth out the tension, when we deny ourselves the practice, we lose the ability to engage with ourselves and our readers over time.

So, if you are a writer, a creator, a quirky soul who revels in curiosity, do me a favor and don’t smooth out the tension. Allow your voice to be awkward in its ramblings. Come back again and again to practice and discover the truths hiding inside of you. Take the time. It won’t be wasted. When you do this, you will find a sweet spot over time. And when you read the work of others, you will see evidence of their heart and soul in their writing, too. These are the voices that allow us all to feel seen and heard. These are the voices that embody our spirit. These are the voices that create connection and compassion in a world that desperately needs it.

Image by AndiP from Pixabay