The whiteness of the screen is blinding. It stares back at me with a steely, unfeeling gaze masked only by years of grime and smudging. Through thin lips it rasps, “Make my day”. I avert my gaze momentarily, only to hear the growl of a mangy black dog from beneath my window, “You’re wasting your time”. Its droopy eye looks up at me as it circles, limping slightly as it tries to find a new spot to keep cool out of the sun.
“It’s all been said before”, the neighbour’s ginger cat whines, jumping up onto the fence under the feijoa, eyeing the dark brown thrush on the upper branches. “Who’s going to read all your amateurish drivel?”, squawks the thrush keeping one eye on the cat, and another on the nectar filled flowers. “It’s too hard, you have no natural talent”, this time my own voice channelling a lazy bone who’d rather be reading the well-crafted work of Martin Edmond or Ashleigh Young. “You’re just looking for praise and adulation”, Lowly Worm whispers, its head poking from out of the pages of a long-forgotten Richard Scarry picture book sitting in my living room bookshelf.
So, this time, what drives me to persevere? What could compel me to answer back to this menagerie of voices, to defy their discordant chorus and to continue? Why do I bother to endure the painful accusations and the lost tv and reading time? The ignominy of posting (I dare not use the word publish) an article on my WordPress site or on my Facebook page and not receiving a single like, let alone a comment or share fills me with fear. Fear of the mangy dog with the droopy eye growling, “I told you so”. And fear of the realisation that I’d wasted a whole day or two on writing a piece when I could instead have water blasted my fence or trained for a half-marathon. But almost as if in a parallel refrain, an alto voice, is it a Tui? in counterpoint to the chorus outside, speaks a subtler fear, “what if you don’t write?”
I try to shield my ears from the voices of fear and restore the ‘why’ that has compelled me for so many years. A why that every New Year I restate using the coloured pencils from my daughter’s art box, vivid resolutions framed on 200gsm art paper, the wild arms of a mind map stretch out as if trying to escape from the page. A why that remains clear, yet somehow perpetually out of reach. I look out across the bay from my bedroom window, with binoculars I can almost touch the cool silvery water, its magic drawing me, pulling me out onto the water – yet with the binoculars back on the shelf, the water remains merely an ephemeral vision, lost in the distance.
My why is buried deep, drowned out by the cacophony of voices and struggles to escape from my lips. Except that there is yet an even smaller quieter voice, perhaps it is the Tui again with a new voice, like the one who comes out after a rainstorm in the early morning and sings the most beautiful song. This smaller voice, almost imperceptible above the squawking thrush, the mewling cat and the barking dog, this voice, almost imperceptibly says, “don’t give up”. It sings a faint but tuneful song, and the words I can just make out are, “you may have a gift. How will you know if you don’t try?”. “How will your friends be encouraged if you don’t start? Does it matter how many likes or shares you get? This isn’t a game or competition like Britain’s Got Talent.”
The words of an old prayer come to mind (was it the Tui again?). The 12th century ascetic monk, St Francis, penned a prayer which begins, “Lord make me an instrument of your peace..” As I reflect, I consider that perhaps my value in this world is not measured by how many likes I get on a blog post. Thinking of St Francis, I perhaps should consider myself more as an instrument, or conduit, of what someone else (most certainly more profoundly) has already said.
The song from the Tui is stronger now. The more I listen to his song, the stronger it gets. Perhaps I too like the Tui have a song, I’m not sure. And even if hidden deep under piles of mud, I need to let this song fight its way to the surface. And perhaps even if only one person is encouraged, that’s all that matters. And even if this one person is me, just me, then that might too be enough. That might make all the effort worthwhile. I won’t know if I don’t try.
LookUpandWonder 