I’ve been sitting on a fairly completed manuscript about Walden for weeks, probably longer. I keep telling myself the yoga introduction needs more references, the activities need more testing, and Hold the Horses! There’s a new book called Thoreau’s God I need to read.
How long do you think I can do this? At what point do we say, This is good enough or This is finished. I understand that artists will purposefully keep something “imperfect” in a piece. Reminds me of my dad, a retired electrician whose art form is mowing the yard.
Dad lives in Ohio where people have huge swaths of grass around their houses, like acres. A riding mower is essential. From April to October, the status of the grass is dad’s primary concern. When my mom was alive, he would mow and leave an uneven edge for her to find, just so she’d have something to critique. So his genius was in the act of imperfection.
I see today how I’m lacking courage to overcome perfection and take action. Surely I’ve pondered this enough? I wrote about courage back in 2015 and again in early 2016. Did I have more courage then? What happens to us—do we become comfortable and complacent, or do we get worn down?
Today, I have a fear of putting something into the world that people will see and judge. You know those fundraisers or Chamber meetings where you have to write your name on the raffle ticket? I’ll either skip it or write someone else’s name. Because then I won’t hear mine loudly called out in a room full of people. Because then everyone looks at me and claps—for what? To celebrate winning something? Seems like that could be a fun thing and not an opportunity for Renee to cringe.
I love the origin of the word courage, from the Anglo-French curage, coer, and Latin cor, from the heart. That we take action from a place of love, compassion, giving, and kindness.
Seems like a good solution to start there. That I can take a really hard step, putting out a book, as a gift or service to the world. That might sound a little pretentious, and well, it’s true. It isn’t like a performance where people applaud once you do it, or the boss saying thanks, nice job on the report. Nothing really happens when a not-famous-person publishes something.
When I told Jeanette I was “dragging my courage” sending a draft manuscript to a publisher, she replied, Just do it, girl— you gotta get it out there. Just take some deep breaths and breathe beautiful white light and positive energy into it and send it on its way…
So that’s exactly what I did. There was definitely no applause and maybe never a reply. It felt enough like an action of the heart. It felt like a little easing of trying to be perfect. I might have to keep doing this over and over until there’s enough Love there for it to fly.