Why We Don’t Have to Always Like What We Are Called to Do or Become

My son was only in second grade when he took my face in his hands. Staring at me with big blue eyes, he sighed, and asked, “Mommy, why are you doing something you hate to do?”

 I was writing a poem. My soul loves poetry. I’d weirdly assumed that because my soul came pre-ordained to create sonnets to free verse, I had to tell myself I liked writing poetry.

 “How do you know I am not having fun?” I was astonished but felt silly. Was I that good at cancelling out my real emotions, despite decades of therapy?

 “Well, your eyebrows turn into a caterpillar, and you kick the couch when you hate something. Even when you don’t like what I’m doing.”

 One of the reasons I’ve found that individuals don’t push forward with a soul-goal is that they get tired of the work part. It’s easy to spiritualize the creative process, equating meaning with ease. Famous greats can set us right.

 Stated Edgar Degas, the famous Post-Impressionist painter, “Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.” George Orwell, who pretty much predicted today’s society in his bestseller, 1984, described writing a book as “a horrible exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.”

 Maybe your soul has been summoned to dance, serve clients, spend long days filing books as a librarian, or raising children from tadpoles to princes and princesses. It doesn’t matter. For some reason, fulfilling a spiritual calling is too often equated with smooth sailing.

 As an author of 40 non-fiction books, a mom to sons, and the caregiver to seemingly infinite numbers of animals over the years, the joy part of these spiritually beneficial undertakings has been greatly dwarfed by full-on exasperation. Especially writing. I’ve never met a first draft I’ve liked. Nor do I ever undertake the fifth edit of a piece with less than ten swear words. Often I wonder if my writing would be better if I could surround my creative bouts with whiskey and soda, like Hemingway used to.

Unfortunately, I don’t drink.

 The idea that soul-service is simple, easy, and fun is a form of spiritual bypassing. Spiritual bypassing occurs when we excuse ourselves—or others—for dysfunctional assumptions or bad behavior because it’s easier to do that.

 There is a lot of this going on. Case in point, sometimes I’ve used my personal Facebook to point out that it’s not okay to drop bombs on—or starve out—a group of people because their religion differs from our own, or for a leader to call people names because they dislike his bad behavior. Comments like, “Just send love,” or “You don’t sound very loving,” are avoiding reality. And that’s spiritual bypassing. So does thinking that because we’re following a soul summoning, the path will be less than rocky.

 Love doesn’t equate with lying to ourselves. The creative process is often grimy and agonizing. If raising a child is hard work, why wouldn’t it be equally challenging to embody our soul in a project?

 None of us would quit taking care of a child because the job is crazy-emotional and completely exhaustive and we’re often too terrified or overwhelmed to think straight. We just keep going.

 Thanks to my son and his poetry comment, I now let myself thoroughly feel my hatred of any dislikeable creative or soul-based task. I remind myself of something Stephen King once stated. “Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is hard work.” But I also let myself fly higher with the highs, too.