"What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun? / Or fester like a sore / And then run? / Does it stink like rotten meat? / Or crust and sugar over / like a syrupy sweet? / Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. / Or does it explode?"
Langston Hughes
How to Become What You Want to Be
By Michael Masterson
"If you want to be a writer, you have to write."
I was 16 years old when my father said those kind-and-cruel words to me. I never forgot them.
The first time I can remember wanting to be a writer, I was 11 or 12 years old. I’d written a poem for Sister Mary Something at school. My rhyming quatrain (AABB) was titled, pretentiously, "How Do I Know the World Is Real?"
I was at the kitchen table when my father started reading it over my shoulder. I felt anxious. My father was a credentialed writer, an award-winning playwright, a Shakespearean scholar, and a teacher of literature, including poetry. I’d seen him, on Saturday mornings, hunched over student essays, muttering and occasionally reading out loud passages to my mother that sounded perfectly good to me but elicited derisive laughter from them.
My father understood the secret-to-me clues of good writing. I didn’t feel at all comfortable having my fragile young poem exposed to the awesome danger of his critical mind. So there I sat, hoping he would go away. But he didn’t. I felt his hand on my shoulder, gentle and warm. "You may have a talent for writing," he said.
I wrote lots of poetry in the months that followed, and began to think of myself as a writer. I liked that feeling. But soon other interests - touch football, the Junior Police Club, girls - crowded themselves into my life. Gradually, I wrote less and less. I still yearned to be a writer and so I began to feel guilty about not writing.
To assuage my guilt, I promised myself that my other activities were "life experience," and that I needed life experience to become the good writer I wanted to be. In developing this excuse for not writing, I was building a structure of self-deception that many people live inside when they abandon their dreams. From the outside, it looks like you are doing nothing. But from the inside, you know that you are in the process of becoming, which, you convince yourself, is the next best thing to being.
That was the shape of my delusion when my father said, "If you want to be a writer, you have to write. A writer is someone who writes."
So many people live their lives failing to become what they want to be because they can’t find the time to get started. How many times have you heard someone say that, one day, they will do what they always wanted to do - travel the world or paint paintings or write a book? And when you hear sentiments like those, what do you feel? Happy because you are confident that one day they will accomplish their long-held goal? Or sort of sad for them because you are pretty sure they never will?
And what about you? What is it that you want to be but haven’t become? What goal or project or task do you keep talking about accomplishing yet never do?
When my father told me that "writers write," he was saying two things:
* I had lost the right to call myself a writer when I stopped writing.
* I could regain the title the moment I started writing again.
If you spend a while ruminating on this, you may find it both disturbing and liberating.
I was disturbed, because I wanted my father to say that the way to become a writer was to read books about writing and then take courses on writing and then perhaps become an apprentice to a writer and then begin writing little bits here and there. And that, finally, after 3 or 10 years of education, preparation, and qualification, I would somehow automatically be a writer.
But as long as I was studying writing or preparing myself to be a writer - and yet not actually writing - I wasn’t a writer. It was as simple as that.
Lots of people feel that they can keep their dreams alive and derive some of the ego satisfaction they hope their dreams will give them simply by living in a state of becoming. "I am not yet the person I want to become, but so long as I continue to express a wish to become that person, I keep that possibility alive and deserve credit for doing so."
To become a writer, the first thing I had to do was refuse to accept any psychological credit for wanting to be a writer. After the initial disappointment of giving up the delusion that becoming was as good as being, I had no choice but to jump over the becoming stage and simply be.
I did that by writing. Every day. And when I learned the secret of getting up early and writing first thing in the morning - hours before other people trailed into work - that’s when I began to really live my dream.
These days, I usually get to the office between 6:30 and 7:00, and the first thing I do is fire up the computer. There is no better feeling than to get going when the office is dark and quiet, usually by making entries into my journal but sometimes by tackling something tougher, like a book chapter. Of the many pleasures of being a writer - finishing a manuscript, collaborating with editors, seeing a copy of the book for the first time, and even making it to best-seller lists - the purest and finest for me has always been the first few hours of the morning when I am in that writerly groove.
The best part about being a writer, I have discovered, is the writing. (It is also the worst part, but that’s another story.) And this is true, I think, for every skill or profession.
The easiest way to become something special is also the fastest: Just start doing it. Don’t wait for the "right" time. Don’t worry about not being qualified. And don’t worry about getting paid for it. Just start doing it.
You want to become a musician? Start playing that piano.
You want to become a philanthropist? Start investing your money.
You want to become a basketball player? Start shooting those hoops.
Don’t spend another minute talking about what you will do… one day.
______________________________
Anti-Aging Tip: Rage Against the Dying of the Lungs
By Al Sears, MD
Your lungs shrink as you get older - a physical change that has far-reaching health consequences. But if you can increase your lung capacity, you’ll be able to oppose and successfully reverse this biological result of aging.
To restore some of the lost lung volume of your youth, you need to create an "oxygen debt" by making your body ask for more oxygen than your lungs can currently provide. You do it by exerting yourself to the point where you have to pant and catch your breath.
Now, it would be dangerous for you to go out and sprint or shovel snow if you’re not used to it. But it’s not dangerous to challenge your lungs a little bit at a time. I originally developed my PACE (Progressively Accelerating Cardiopulmonary Exertion) exercise program to allow you to do just that.
My recommendation is to use an exercise machine that can read your heart rate - like a stair-stepper, elliptical machine, treadmill, or stationary bicycle. Warm up for two minutes at a leisurely pace. Increase your speed to 75 percent of a full sprint for two minutes. Then immediately go to a 90 percent sprint for 30 seconds.
Note your heart rate when you stop. If it continues to climb a few more beats per minute after your sprint, during the "recovery" period, you have successfully created an oxygen debt. Now you can hit the shower! You have sent your body the message to get to work building you a bigger lung capacity - while you rest.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Sears, a practicing physician and the author of The Doctor’s Heart Cure is a leading authority on longevity, physical fitness, and heart health.]
______________________________
It’s Good to Know: About Chili Peppers
Chemist Wilbur Scoville developed his namesake scale and test that is used to measure the amount of capsaicin - and, therefore, heat - in a hot pepper. Tabasco sauce is rated at 2,500-5,000 SCUs (Scoville Heat Units), with the Naga Jolokia pepper of India, at 855,000-1,000,000 SCUs, the hottest in the world.
(Source: Wikipedia)
______________________________
Word to the Wise: Nugatory
Something that’s "nugatory" (NOO-guh-tor-ee) - from the Latin for "trifle" - has no real value or importance.
Example (as used in a New Statesman article by John Lloyd): "Socialism no longer restrains; trade unions do so much less than they did; moral inhibitions over the acquisition and display of wealth are nugatory."
Michael Masterson
__________________________________________________
These articles appear courtesy of Early to Rise [Issue #1985, 03-09-07], the Internet's most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.
Langston Hughes
How to Become What You Want to Be
By Michael Masterson
"If you want to be a writer, you have to write."
I was 16 years old when my father said those kind-and-cruel words to me. I never forgot them.
The first time I can remember wanting to be a writer, I was 11 or 12 years old. I’d written a poem for Sister Mary Something at school. My rhyming quatrain (AABB) was titled, pretentiously, "How Do I Know the World Is Real?"
I was at the kitchen table when my father started reading it over my shoulder. I felt anxious. My father was a credentialed writer, an award-winning playwright, a Shakespearean scholar, and a teacher of literature, including poetry. I’d seen him, on Saturday mornings, hunched over student essays, muttering and occasionally reading out loud passages to my mother that sounded perfectly good to me but elicited derisive laughter from them.
My father understood the secret-to-me clues of good writing. I didn’t feel at all comfortable having my fragile young poem exposed to the awesome danger of his critical mind. So there I sat, hoping he would go away. But he didn’t. I felt his hand on my shoulder, gentle and warm. "You may have a talent for writing," he said.
I wrote lots of poetry in the months that followed, and began to think of myself as a writer. I liked that feeling. But soon other interests - touch football, the Junior Police Club, girls - crowded themselves into my life. Gradually, I wrote less and less. I still yearned to be a writer and so I began to feel guilty about not writing.
To assuage my guilt, I promised myself that my other activities were "life experience," and that I needed life experience to become the good writer I wanted to be. In developing this excuse for not writing, I was building a structure of self-deception that many people live inside when they abandon their dreams. From the outside, it looks like you are doing nothing. But from the inside, you know that you are in the process of becoming, which, you convince yourself, is the next best thing to being.
That was the shape of my delusion when my father said, "If you want to be a writer, you have to write. A writer is someone who writes."
So many people live their lives failing to become what they want to be because they can’t find the time to get started. How many times have you heard someone say that, one day, they will do what they always wanted to do - travel the world or paint paintings or write a book? And when you hear sentiments like those, what do you feel? Happy because you are confident that one day they will accomplish their long-held goal? Or sort of sad for them because you are pretty sure they never will?
And what about you? What is it that you want to be but haven’t become? What goal or project or task do you keep talking about accomplishing yet never do?
When my father told me that "writers write," he was saying two things:
* I had lost the right to call myself a writer when I stopped writing.
* I could regain the title the moment I started writing again.
If you spend a while ruminating on this, you may find it both disturbing and liberating.
I was disturbed, because I wanted my father to say that the way to become a writer was to read books about writing and then take courses on writing and then perhaps become an apprentice to a writer and then begin writing little bits here and there. And that, finally, after 3 or 10 years of education, preparation, and qualification, I would somehow automatically be a writer.
But as long as I was studying writing or preparing myself to be a writer - and yet not actually writing - I wasn’t a writer. It was as simple as that.
Lots of people feel that they can keep their dreams alive and derive some of the ego satisfaction they hope their dreams will give them simply by living in a state of becoming. "I am not yet the person I want to become, but so long as I continue to express a wish to become that person, I keep that possibility alive and deserve credit for doing so."
To become a writer, the first thing I had to do was refuse to accept any psychological credit for wanting to be a writer. After the initial disappointment of giving up the delusion that becoming was as good as being, I had no choice but to jump over the becoming stage and simply be.
I did that by writing. Every day. And when I learned the secret of getting up early and writing first thing in the morning - hours before other people trailed into work - that’s when I began to really live my dream.
These days, I usually get to the office between 6:30 and 7:00, and the first thing I do is fire up the computer. There is no better feeling than to get going when the office is dark and quiet, usually by making entries into my journal but sometimes by tackling something tougher, like a book chapter. Of the many pleasures of being a writer - finishing a manuscript, collaborating with editors, seeing a copy of the book for the first time, and even making it to best-seller lists - the purest and finest for me has always been the first few hours of the morning when I am in that writerly groove.
The best part about being a writer, I have discovered, is the writing. (It is also the worst part, but that’s another story.) And this is true, I think, for every skill or profession.
The easiest way to become something special is also the fastest: Just start doing it. Don’t wait for the "right" time. Don’t worry about not being qualified. And don’t worry about getting paid for it. Just start doing it.
You want to become a musician? Start playing that piano.
You want to become a philanthropist? Start investing your money.
You want to become a basketball player? Start shooting those hoops.
Don’t spend another minute talking about what you will do… one day.
______________________________
Anti-Aging Tip: Rage Against the Dying of the Lungs
By Al Sears, MD
Your lungs shrink as you get older - a physical change that has far-reaching health consequences. But if you can increase your lung capacity, you’ll be able to oppose and successfully reverse this biological result of aging.
To restore some of the lost lung volume of your youth, you need to create an "oxygen debt" by making your body ask for more oxygen than your lungs can currently provide. You do it by exerting yourself to the point where you have to pant and catch your breath.
Now, it would be dangerous for you to go out and sprint or shovel snow if you’re not used to it. But it’s not dangerous to challenge your lungs a little bit at a time. I originally developed my PACE (Progressively Accelerating Cardiopulmonary Exertion) exercise program to allow you to do just that.
My recommendation is to use an exercise machine that can read your heart rate - like a stair-stepper, elliptical machine, treadmill, or stationary bicycle. Warm up for two minutes at a leisurely pace. Increase your speed to 75 percent of a full sprint for two minutes. Then immediately go to a 90 percent sprint for 30 seconds.
Note your heart rate when you stop. If it continues to climb a few more beats per minute after your sprint, during the "recovery" period, you have successfully created an oxygen debt. Now you can hit the shower! You have sent your body the message to get to work building you a bigger lung capacity - while you rest.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Sears, a practicing physician and the author of The Doctor’s Heart Cure is a leading authority on longevity, physical fitness, and heart health.]
______________________________
It’s Good to Know: About Chili Peppers
Chemist Wilbur Scoville developed his namesake scale and test that is used to measure the amount of capsaicin - and, therefore, heat - in a hot pepper. Tabasco sauce is rated at 2,500-5,000 SCUs (Scoville Heat Units), with the Naga Jolokia pepper of India, at 855,000-1,000,000 SCUs, the hottest in the world.
(Source: Wikipedia)
______________________________
Word to the Wise: Nugatory
Something that’s "nugatory" (NOO-guh-tor-ee) - from the Latin for "trifle" - has no real value or importance.
Example (as used in a New Statesman article by John Lloyd): "Socialism no longer restrains; trade unions do so much less than they did; moral inhibitions over the acquisition and display of wealth are nugatory."
Michael Masterson
__________________________________________________
These articles appear courtesy of Early to Rise [Issue #1985, 03-09-07], the Internet's most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.
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