Psychology

The Intimate Effort of Gratitude

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

“Have gratitude,” old New Age gurus and profit-seeking profits tell us. “Be grateful for what you have” is pounded into our ears by people that want to force gratitude. If you’re suspicious people are telling you to be grateful, your suspicions are well-founded.

But let’s step away from that and ask how we can use gratitude. How it can make our lives better – when we take ownership of it.  

Consider an adverse situation – not hard in the age of COVID-19 – can you find something that lets you feel gratitude? Is there a lesson there, a surprising benefit, a lucky coincidence? Is there something, in short, promising you can appreciate no matter how awful things are?

Ferreting out what is truly good in a situation changes your relationship to the situation. Finding something good develops an intimacy with the world, even when it’s not a pleasant part of the world.

In my practices of Buddhism, often informed by Pema Chödrön, she emphasized how unpleasant things became transformative. To feel adversity, to breathe in black unhappiness, was to get to know yourself and the world. It was not pleasant, it was not expected to be – but the experience of diving into bad feelings made life more real.

Gratitude, even in bad times, lets us find a new connection to the world. By having to look at a situation and find something truly and honestly good, we experience intimacy. Life becomes more real at that moment.

In turn, by practicing gratitude in bad situations, we can bring it to the rest of our life. We can appreciate things easier, take down our defenses a bit and get real. It may hurt, it may be minor, but our lives belong more to us.

It’s just gratitude on our terms. Though perhaps we can be grateful to the fake gurus and hope-peddling con artists. Their lies are a great way to point out the real value of gratitude.

Steven Savage

Old Writer Meet New Writer

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

“Put it down for a while” is advice often given to writers. Tired of your story, then take a break. Done editing, then take a break. The virtuous idea is that if you’re frustrated, tired, or just did a lot of writing, a break lets you return with fresh energy and fresh eyes.

I am a believer, if a hypocritical one, in taking a break as a writer. But as food for thought, let me suggest a break does not just give you fresh eyes – it gives you new ones.

When you finish a project or a writing setting, your mind is awhirl. Letting yourself take a break lets the lessons sink into your mind. Your break is a time of change.

When you finish a project or a writing session and take a break, your mind does other things besides writing. In that time, you take new stimuli, new ideas, new inspirations. Your break is a time of taking in other things.

When you finish a project or a writing session, a break is a chance to see a project differently. Stray ideas and unstructured contemplation let you gain new viewpoints. Your break is a time to gain new insights.

The work does not change when you take a break – but you do.  The person who returns to work after an hour or a day or a week off is literally someone else.

This viewpoint provides more than a way to discuss the nature of impermanence. It’s a reminder that sometimes you need to stop writing and rest to become the person that can continue your work. If you are tired, uninspired, etc., you may not just be in a bad state – you may be the wrong person for the job. A rest from writing is a chance to become the you that can go on.

So next time you’re tired of writing, frustrated, or just exhausted, just rest. The person you are has done their job; the person you will be can take over next. Give them space to arrive.

Steven Savage

The Treasures of Models and Metaphors

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

As Serdar and I often discuss in our blogs, people find inspiration in areas unrelated to their projects and goals. He finds ideas from the aesthetics of music that inform his writing. I took self-help book ideas and created a worldbuilding series. Whatever your interests, sometimes the best inspiration comes from somewhere else.

I think one of the advantages of these diverse inspirations is giving you new models and metaphors.

Recently, I noted a videogame named Slipways gave me a model for stable social circles. The game involves creating a series of linked colonies that support each other. It helped me see that it was a great pattern for building social ties in these troubled times.

This insight helped me see other times I’d had inspiration from one source help me in seemingly unrelated areas of creativity as models or metaphors. My worldbuilding books take the self-help model and apply it to fictional settings. I used fractals as a metaphor for certain patterns in fiction writing. As everyone is aware, I use Agile methods for ideas and models throughout my work and feed my findings back to Agile.

Models and metaphors are ways we can move insights around from one inspiration to another. A model gives us a framework to re-envision the relationships of ideas, even if we may have to hammer a round idea through a square concept. A metaphor inspires us with a new way to see and connect information. Having a variety to use gives us more and better ways to create.

Realizing just how “unrelated inspiration” can become very related, I’m curious how I might see the world differently now. I know I’ve done this seeking of models and metaphors semi-consciously. I’m quite interested as to how I’ll see the world being more conscious of it . . .

Steven Savage