“Inhale from the unwatched space, and even breathe away your dreams of recognition and fame. Inhale from the unwatched space, and feel the attention of life connect you to everything.” – Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
With a lick of her index finger between each page and a close-lipped smile, my grandma read me the story of hippopotamus friends George and Martha countless times when I was little. She had good taste in children’s books, choosing ones with enough subtle humor to appeal to adults. The original George and Martha is made up of five small stories. In the fourth, called “The Mirror,” George is so tired of Martha’s habit of looking at herself in the mirror day and night that he replaces the mirror with a silly picture he drew of Martha. After recovering from her shock, Martha promises never to look in the mirror again. If only it were so simple in real life—and in the creative life.
Then again, maybe it is. In Build the Life You Want, Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey write about the benefits of getting rid of mirrors in your house. It can make a big difference, they say, in minimizing time spent in self-consciousness and maximizing time spent experiencing the world. I’ve found this to be true for scales. I’ve never owned one, but when I’ve had access to them, like in a gym or the doctor’s office, I can’t help but step on them. And then I start to think about my body in mean, silly scale terms. Not having one in the house has prevented this thinking from becoming a part of my every day. Although getting rid of mirrors in the home feels a bit radical, having fewer seems achievable.
It might help to start with a more forgiving way of thinking about these everyday objects. Society—and George and Martha—call them vanity tools. But how often do I look in the mirror or step on a scale to feel good about myself? Instead, they are usually vehicles of self-criticism. Viewing them this way makes it easier to see the kindness in using them less.
Using them less may have benefits for creative work too. I’ve recently realized how important the unwatched self is to my writing. It’s from this place that characters speak and move and become their own beings. If every book is unformed clay that has a shape it wants to be, then writing is a matter of tuning out my ego and tuning into the characters. As soon as my ego enters the picture, it snaps me out of my characters’ world in an instant. Then it tends to tell me the writing is bad or useless.
So the question becomes: What are the figurative mirrors and scales in our creative work—the things masquerading as tools that end up shifting us toward self-consciousness and its close cousin self-judgment?
And a companion question: What are the external tools that help us shift toward the unwatched self? Moving my writing time from my basement to coffee shops has been my recent trick for entering the space where my self-awareness dissolves and characters start to dance off the page. This is also the space where any dreams of recognition fade. Relieved of the weight of those dreams, peace and play can don their artist smocks and start to paint.
Ahhhh, the mirror! A friend sent me a picture of my husband and me the other day. We looked great! Then I looked in the mirror and realized it had to be from a long time ago. Wrong! It was only 4 years ago, yet I looked so much younger. Ugh! How could I age 20 years in just 4? It was a reality check that I did not want to see. My hair is thinning (and it was thin to begin with!) and my face is wrinkling. Oh well. Thankfully, it is happening when I’ve reached an age where it matters less to me. And the smiles of my grandchildren when they see me mean so much more. Without age, I wouldn’t have them. And I wouldn’t go back for anything! And the equally wrinkled smiles of my good friends when they see me and we share this stage of life reminds me how lucky I am to get to this point, healthy and very happy!
I also change writing locations to help my brain let go of daily tasks and enter into creativity. But I hadn’t thought of it as a place to release self-criticism.