To: ericmaiselnewsletter@yahoogroups.com
Hello, everyone:
Among the ideas that I teach in my Introduction to Creativity Coaching Training is the idea of balancing dream-holding with reality-testing: that is, the idea that a creative person must both maintain her dreams and her ambitions while at the same time being real about what’s required of her in order for her to achieve those dreams and realize those ambitions. I also devote a chapter to this subject in my book Coaching the Artist Within. Last week I received such an interesting response to this lesson from a participant in the current training, the South African author Annelie Ferreira (anferreira@vodamail.co.za), that I asked her if I could share it with you. Here it is.
Annelie wrote:
At first I thought this was going to be an easy response. I had a short, tidy example ready of being real with a client, my friend. I suggested that she think through the practical issues associated with the book that she had in mind, a book for a very small market. I could not tell her what to decide, I said, but I knew that writing a book was very hard work, and the market she was aiming for was very small. She was relieved about my reaction, because while she liked the idea of this book, these concerns had indeed been nagging at the back of her mind.
I think the reason why I had been able to give her a “real” answer is that my last two books were textbook examples of decisions made blatantly ignoring reality. And thinking about this week’s lesson, I found myself unraveling a surprising tangle of emotions.
Besides witnessing the miracle of South African rebirth in 1994, I was doing something else that year: I was figuring out the meaning of life. Since my teens I have found myself disagreeing with a variety of cultural norms: our political system, the role of women, censorship. The experience of therapy around the age of thirty gave me a whole new area of beliefs and habits to question and explore, those in my own subconscious.
I suppose it was only a matter of time before I started questioning the religion I grew up with. Boy, were there some things that made absolutely no sense. But what I wanted was sense; if not in religion, then in some other principle that, even if I was the only one who believed in its truth, would do justice to the vast dynamic of life, its stunning complexity, its haunting mysteries.
With the confidence of a new, fairly successful writer, I decided to write a book about my quest for meaning, explaining my questions and answers. When the book was launched a year later, it got mixed reviews, which I expected. What I did not expect was the number of religious ministers who contacted me and thanked me for writing it. I had expressed what they were thinking but could never say, they said, not if they wanted to keep their jobs. I was also contacted by the theology department of a “liberal” South African university, who invited me to come and speak there. I still have friends I made there.
After all this deep philosophy I took off a year to write a novel, play a little, have some fun. But the business of meaning kept pulling me back, and became intertwined with my wish to help build and support our new open South African society. I still explored meaning through thinking, considering, dissecting, but at the heart of the meaning I had accepted was the ability to connect, the freedom to see beauty and honour in lives different from mine, choices different from mine. And I wrote about it.
One of the most meaningful projects I did was compiling a manuscript on all the different belief systems in South Africa, from African religion to atheism. I asked people of all races and beliefs to write essays about these beliefs, or I interviewed them. I was deeply touched by their willingness to allow me into the most sacred chambers of their souls, to show their vulnerability, their hopes, their courage.
I could not find a publisher for the manuscript. Afrikaans publishers were fighting for survival, a book like that was too great a risk to accept. Did warning bells go off for me? Sure. And again when I agreed to co-write a book on the origins of religion, and how the beliefs of people everywhere were changing as the world was changing. My co-author dropped out. I carried on. I was fascinated by the subject.
And wasn’t there a whole symphony of bells ringing when I started compiling another book on the beliefs of Afrikaners, from traditional to liberal? Even very clear voices, late at night while I was labouring, “Annelie, you know you’re working your butt off for nothing?” Yes, I knew! But I loved all these bright and beautiful and sincere people, I wanted to give them a voice, I wanted them to be heard!
And maybe I was scared, clutching at the familiar as it was slipping away.
As it happened, the two books came out within months of each other. Both got ninety percent excellent reviews – and sold very, very badly.
I decided to try writing for an English market. A year after that my husband and I decided that he would look for a job overseas. Our miracle of 1994 has faded, it does not seem that our new government has succeeded in overcoming the huge challenges they faced. The reasons are complex, I guess, inexperience, political baggage, cultural differences, the taste of power.
Maybe, in five years’ time, I will be interviewed by an overseas TV station and say, casually, “The best thing that ever happened to me was the failure of my last two Afrikaans books. That led me to write my first English novel, which has now sold five million copies, as you all know, and …”
I would like that, yes.
But a sorrow remains.
There is a scene at the end of the movie The Mission, set in the eighteenth century, where two high-ranking Spanish church officials receive news of the massacre of children and adults at a Spanish mission station in South America. The killings were done by Portuguese colonialists, by agreement with Spain.
One of the officials sighs. “Thus is the world,” he says.
There is a pause.
“No,” his companion says, “thus we have made the world.”
And this is my sorrow, not that I had failed at writing, but that I had failed to save what I loved, that I was unable to un-make the world.
I bow my head to that, and move on.
Regards
Annelie
**
Annelie will be taking the Meaning Coaching Training that starts in June. Will you? For details: http://www.meaningcoach.com/train.html
And have you thought about being a free client in the Meaning Coaching Training? For details on that, please send me an email to ericmaisel@hotmail.com with “free meaning coaching” in the subject line. A golden opportunity!
Have an excellent Sunday.
Best,
Eric
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