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Many years ago, but not so many as you might imagine, I got a tattoo.
Those who know me might say I’m not the tattoo type, whatever that is, and probably they’re right. But it was premeditated, I was stone-cold sober, and I was in my late thirties. This was not an impulsive decision.
The idea had been in my mind for a while at that point. I had been on a bit of a journey with my spirit and psyche and was coming to terms with one of my biggest bugaboos: accepting uncertainty.
For those who know me, again this is unlikely to come as a surprise. I am a big fan of control, both of self and my environment. I crave security and definitive, concrete answers.
I started thinking about a tangible representation of some of the concepts I had been working to make peace with. I settled on a question mark, for many reasons: because it reminds me that much is unknowable in the world and peace lies in accepting that. Because friends have often joked that my favorite question is “why?” And for the sheer fact that an editor really should have punctuation marks tattooed on her body.
I asked an artist friend of mine to design what I wanted: two question marks in a yin/yang, surrounded by the Earth. I wanted color and lots of it, again no surprise to anyone who has seen my book covers or my house or pretty much anything in my life. And I wanted to get it in a way that would be fun and meaningful.
Luckily at the time I knew a local tattoo artist who had done work for friends and had a great eye and a deft touch. I decided to arrange a tattoo party at my house, where friends could come hang out and be social while a few of us who wanted tattoos took turns going into my bedroom onto my purple chaise longue, where Paisley, my tattoo artist friend’s name (ostensibly), worked on each of us individually.
I still love that tattoo: My friend’s design was better than anything I could imagine, two orange yin/yang question marks encompassed by a blue-green Earth populated with a blazing yellow sun, purple stars, a sliver of blue moon. (Yes, as I describe it to you I realize it sounds like I’m a green clover away from a bowl of Lucky Charms.)
The tattoo was for me, so I got it where it would almost always be underneath whatever I was wearing, but where I can I see it every day (my hip—don’t make it weird), and in the many years since, it has served very much as the touchstone I wanted it as, particularly at certain trying times of my life when I’ve needed to remind myself of the lessons and truths it was meant to symbolize.
Like now, for instance, when it often feels to me as if a world I thought I understood has gone a bit mad.
Friends are become enemies and enemies become friends. Seemingly endless wars wage across the globe. Forces of hate I believed we’d overcome years ago reveal themselves right within our midst. A populace that once prided itself on knowledge and advancement is defying science, experts, and their own eyes in their determination to deny reality. People are moving ever further to extremes and demonizing anyone who doesn’t share their beliefs. Those whose values I thought I knew speak and act in ways I would never have imagined.
Quite honestly I don’t know what to make of it, and I don’t know what’s going to become of us, any of us, or what kind of world we are going to find ourselves in.
Read more: "How Can Writing Matter in the Face of Suffering?"
Uncertainty and Creativity
Okay, let’s pull it back from the brink of existential despair, shall we? Back to my question marks. I find myself turning to them more and more lately, a bit of a talisman against losing myself in those darker feelings.
And as I so often do, I find myself extrapolating from my life in an effort to find new ways to understand my craft.
All of us who are pursuing a writing career have chosen a field rife with uncertainty. We don’t know whether anyone will buy our work, whether we’ll make a living or any money at all from it, how our books may sell, or what people may think of them.
Hell, much of the time we don’t know how our own stories are going to turn out even as we’re writing them, even if we have planned and outlined them to within an inch of their lives. That’s the nature of art: It’s ephemeral and mutable and entirely subjective.
We go into a field where odds of success are phenomenally slim, and yet hope abides. We keep coming back to the work even when it’s kicking our ass…because we are determined to make it what we hope it can be.
Even our own feelings about a work of art—our own or anyone else’s—are liable to shift as we evolve, sometimes from day to day. (Any author who has ever been delighted with their own work, only to come back to it the next day and find it dreck—and I’m betting that’s almost all of us—understands what I’m talking about.)
And yet we do it anyway. We go into a field where odds of success are phenomenally slim, and yet hope abides. We keep coming back to the work even when it’s kicking our ass…because we are determined to make it what we hope it can be. In the perspicacious words of Chumbawamba, we get knocked down and we get up again—because you’re never going to keep us down.
That powerful animating creative force inside us cannot be snuffed. Not forever. If you are called to create you must create, and you will create, even if the way you do that may shift throughout the course of your life.
It’s all the best parts of human nature that fuel us in those efforts: Love—of story and craft and language and imagination and humanity, flawed as it may be. Fellowship and community—that we can make ourselves truly known to others, and truly know them, and deeply connect. Faith–in ourselves and in the best within us, all of us, and in the world as we dream and believe it could be.
Hope—that it’s possible, that we can make it so.
Read more: "There's No Happily-ever-after and the Good Guys Never Win"
The Mighty Power of Words
I imagine I have mentioned this before in this blog, but I frequently think of Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning, a poignant, enlightening, and shining example of all the best that humanity is capable of. A book of beauty and hope and light created in the darkest place imaginable: Nazi concentration camps in the middle of the greatest modern evil the world has ever known.
Frankl was imprisoned in four different camps over three years; his mother and brother were killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. His wife died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen.
He formulated the ideas of the book in his head as he endured horrific treatment and conditions, and when against all odds he survived and regained his right to freedom, he wrote it all down.
Somehow amid all that atrocity and suffering, he held on to the best not only within himself, but within humankind. Somehow when he was released he did not grow bitter or angry or apathetic or despairing. Instead he shared his thoughts, research, and his hope in his work so that others might benefit from it too.
Words and story can be used to foment fear and hatred and to manipulate people’s thoughts and beliefs. Or they can be used to illuminate truth and understanding. To create community and connection. To instill hope.
I recently pulled out my dog-eared, Post-it-noted, well-thumbed copy of the book. I need it right now. I need to remind myself that despite the uncertainty and unrest that may be raging around me, I can find a solid foundation. I need to remember that even when things may look and feel bleak and I have no way of knowing whether any of it is going to be okay, I can be okay.
It reminds me, too, of the might and light of words. They can be used to foment fear and hatred and to manipulate people’s thoughts and beliefs. Or they can be used to illuminate truth and understanding. To create community and connection. To instill hope.
Maybe you are dealing with uncertainty on a personal level, a career level, or a global level. Almost certainly you are, because that is the human condition. That’s what my question marks are meant to remind me of.
But they’re also meant to remind me that I can find contentment and peace and even joy despite the don’t-know. And that’s where I find fortitude when I’m facing challenges in my life. It’s where I find resilience and fulfillment in the endless uncertainties and ups and downs of my creative career.
And, just maybe, it’s where I can find the equanimity I need to be okay even amid our current global unrest—and manage to find hope…and to share it.
Read more: "Protect Your Instrument"
What about you, authors, friends—where do you find your fortitude amid uncertain or troubling events? How do you remember that everything is temporary—the good as well as the bad—and that the world forever vacillates between the ups and the downs, without getting subsumed by the downs or despairing at the inevitable ebb of the ups?
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18 Comments. Leave new
I want to see the tattoo. It sounds interesting. Please.post a picture.
Ha! I hoped to evoke the image with my description. 🙂
I do too. A tasteful photo. Also, I love this post,Tiffany. So many truths in it. Thank you.
I have the original sketch somewhere and will try to find and post it. 🙂 I’m glad the post was useful–I hope it continues to be at a time when I think we may need equanimity more than ever.
My one-person publishing company is Tuxedo Cat Press. At book fairs and holiday markets, people routinely see the logo (photo of my tuxie, Charlotte) and start telling me about their cats. I assume a stern look and say, “We have a very strict rule at Tuxedo Cat Press.” Just as they begin to look worried, I continue, “If you’re going to tell me about your cat, you have to show me your cat.” At which point they laugh, pull out their phones, and we ooh and aah over their cat photos.
Same thing here: if you’re going to tell us about this lovely-sounding tattoo, you have to show us the tattoo. Well, not “have to”, but I’d really like to see it. 😉
I’m also going to find Viktor Frankel’s book. Sounds like exactly the thing right now.
That’s funny…. I debated photographing it and adding the pic…but no. 😉
When my brain starts running away with me, I use one of two lenses.
The first is very close up, a sort of ultra-personal systems check.
Right now, at this very moment, am I breathing? Are my kids OK, safe in their beds or playing video games or whatever? Is my husband? I go through my very short list of people I would step in front of a train for, and ask- are they OK, right this second? I don’t allow myself to consider what they really should be doing, or what the future holds for them, or any other moment but now. That often helps to stop the spiraling, if I consider just my very tight circle.
The second lens is a deep historical perspective. Definitely, considering the experience of Holocaust survivors is an excellent example of this, but also, think of living, say, in the 1970s, when my current fiction is set, with the threat of nuclear war and domestic bombings and the horrific tragedy of the Vietnam war, the Watergate scandal, bewildering social changes… Or the 1930s, during the Great Depression, or the 1860s in the Civil War, or the 1770s and the Revolutionary War, and on and on, as far back as we can go. The Cro-Magnons were dealing with the climate catastrophe of the Ice Age and being hunted by huge predators and pressure from an entirely different human species, the Neanderthals. What was it like to be alive then?
For me, the point isn’t that our times aren’t difficult, but that times are *always* difficult. As you say, it’s the human condition. So that means, logically, that during all these times, which must have been heartbreaking and incredibly stressful to live through, there were also babies being born and people falling in love and gardens producing bounties and waterfalls doing that soothing thing they do. Both are always true at once. That helps me realize that, for my own sanity and effectiveness, I need to look around for the positive aspects of the human condition too. And to be a good writer, one who communicates to other humans about our shared circumstances, I need to be aware of and experiencing that full range, and not just hyper-focusing on either the good or the bad.
Oh, Heather, I love everything about this post. What a breath of reason and calm.
Just read Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter today that had a similar message to your first point–being in the “right now.” That’s useful–not affecting our well-being by obsessing over things that “aren’t” yet.
A friend of mine frequently helps me remember your second point: Keeping things in historical perspective. I know things have been much worse. That doesn’t negate what’s alarming/bad/threatening in the “now” situation, but it does help fortify me.
And yes, I work hard to see and cultivate all the great good around me…to put into the world the energy I want to see in it…and to bring all that into my work.
Wise words–thanks for sharing. <3
Congratulations on having the courage and wisdom to embrace uncertainty. The currently fashionable method of dealing with it is demonizing it.(Current, not new. It’s been around as long as people. Banishing it, prohibiting it, and other forms of denial are not quite as popular today, but they don’t work any better.)
I’ve occasionally wanted a tattoo, but not being as clever or creative as you,
I was never able to think of anything so profound or original that I would be willing to wear it forever.
I’ve made a certain amount of peace with uncertainty largely by asking, what’s the worst thing that could happen and how bad would that be? Uncertainty still occasionally jumps up and bites me on the behind, but in retrospect, it always turns out that it was silly, rather than serious.
Maybe not always silly…but if it’s out of our control–as so much is–what is the good in letting it dictate our frame of mind? These are reminders I’m carrying close, especially in this moment–along with all that’s good around me. What we do get to control is our mindset, and I won’t give power over that to whatever may be swirling around me. Thanks for being here, Bob–as always.
When troubled by uncertainty, I find courage and strength in my faith, family, and the predictability of nature. No matter what happens, I believe my Higher Power is with me and will nudge me toward effective coping strategies. My family will always support and love me (and befuddle and amuse me). And the sun, moon, and seasons will do their things, providing opportunities for awe and gratitude. I remind myself that in the big scheme of the planet, I’m here for a brief season and none of my issues will have a monumental impact on the world. We win some; we lose some.
I think that that’s the noblest purpose for faith–to offer strength and comfort. And it seems healthy to remind ourselves of all the good around us, the people and things we cherish in life. And how insignificant it all is on a universal scale, how ephemeral–and how out of our control. All good reminders, especially today. Thanks, Lee.
Walking into the unknown outcome of my writing has been at the forefront of my mind for several months. I’ve come to this conclusion: it’s not the unknown that’s bothering me—it’s the fear of feeling regret.
Let me explain. If I don’t write and share my work, I will regret not having done it. If I write and share my work and not a single person reads or appreciates it, I’m going to regret having spent time doing it. In fact, I’ll likely feel delusional for even believing that I could create something of value.
Then there’s the long-shot chance it works. Sure, I’ll be excited. I’ll wish I’d begun earlier. I’ll wonder what I was so concerned about. I might even break out a bullhorn and tell everyone, “Relax! If I can do it, so can you.”
This I believe: the words are going to come out. There’s too much energy in my soul for them not to. The only way to understand how they’ll be received is to step into the unknown.
This seems to me like a very healthy outlook on so much in life. I frequently cite palliative-care nurse Bronnie Ware‘s famous “top five regrets of the dying”–and they include things like not living a life true to ourselves. I think our creativity falls under that banner (and others on the list, which is very worth reading). The regret of what we don’t do is often the keenest–and taking those risks almost always involves that leap into the unknown you mention. That’s living. Thanks for sharing this, Richard. It was good to read, especially today.
Oh Tiffany what a wonderful post. Thank you for sharing and may you continue to find peace (even while the rest of the world goes crazy!)
Thank you, Syl–and to you as well!
This wonderful essay reminds me of words that may benefit us all:
“In the cave you fear to enter lies the treasure that you seek.”
—Joseph Campbell
Beautiful quote, Nathan–thanks for sharing. And thanks for the kind comment.