Resolutions Ahead of my Third Decade
Complacency is the foremost malaise of age. I’ve turned 29 this year and learned a few lessons about myself. It isn’t a lesson that is new, but the sort of experiential learning that cements received knowledge to create wisdom. Complacency. The lack of motivation to rock the boat, to strive, to desire, to want. It’s akin to making one mortal effort and forgetting that even Ozymandias lies forgotten in desert wastes.
I have not written in 7 years. My last published work from the Iowa Creative Writing Workshop found its way into Earthwords Magazine. Prairie Lights in Iowa City honoured me by hosting a reading of my firsthand account of the impact of the Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon.
Perhaps I felt that I already understood the craft and without anything to say, I should not make false attempts if only just to hone my skill. Maybe I was right at the time or maybe I clutched that notion too closely and waited around far too long for inspiration to strike twice. A fool waits for chances to emerge, thinking that looking inwardly and often won’t lead to growth.
In those 7 years I gave my time instead to education and to work. In much of that work I succeeded and in many things I was met with failures. Complacency would be to rest on my meagre successes and expect them to tide me by. After much introspection in the last 2 years and arriving at an impasse necessitating I adapt, I’ve chosen not to remain immovable in the face of things.
Life is not worth living if we stop ascribing meaning to what we do. Over time this degrades our sense of fulfilment. Work is an expression of our creative wills; not an incentivised race for pecuniary accretion. Modernity bearing down on our heads mustn’t stifle this expression of the self in our wants and hopes. I cannot rest feeling I’ve done it all or seen it all.
Sometimes to dream is to dream. It is when our lucid self finds divine sanction and incitement. It is where all stories live.
I’ve resolved to return to writing, among other creative endeavours.