No One Cares (What I Write)

Open mic 🎤question on the memoirist's state of mind

From a Reader:

So, say you're writing a memoir-ish book—and you're writing that book for yourself—but you struggle with the thought, "yeah but no one will care," how does one get past that? And what does that thought really tell us about our current state of mind? Asking for a friend.

There are two questions here:

1. How to get past the “yeah, but no one will care”?

2. What does that thought mean about one’s current “state of mind?”

Tackling the second question first seems the best approach because as I sit typing this post, hail taps at the window. It’s yet another blustering storm rolling in that is quickly followed by shocks of bright sunlight that melt the ice shimmering in the wet grass. And soon, too soon, the sun will be swallowed by more clouds, the sky will darken, and another wave of wind and ice will blow through.

That is the current state of mind…for all of us; ever changing, ungraspable, unstoppable. And if that is the case, well, that’s the first thing to reckon with.

Accept that ones state of mind is always in flux.

We cannot stop the mind any more than we can stop the storms.

What is needed then is a broader view.

My remedy is two-fold:

First, get out. And I mean out of the city, out of the noise, out of the neighborhood, if you can. Get to open space. A beach. A hilltop. A river. Get away from having to smile and nod and greet others. Get to a place where you can simply be and stay until the thoughts dissipate. In that moment, you can finally get an idea of what kind of space your mind needs to clear out.

I need to walk for about an hour down a beach and out to where the river meets the sea. I am in the center of all this; Sand. Gulls. Wind. Silence. When I turn around to go back, finally, finally, something clicks, and while the thinking is there, it’s not as dense, or loud, or as important.

Second, sit down and surrender to your mind in a state of acceptance. Notice it. “Oh. There is thinking again.” See it come, see it go, for this time. Five minutes, I tell my son, just five minutes twice a day with up to twenty minutes twice a day as a goal.

Many teachers will suggest paying attention to your breath. But my favorite teaching on this came from an old master in the Tibetan tradition, long gone now, who asked, “What will you do when you are no longer breathing? How will you practice then?”

He was talking about practice that transcends this incarnation in this lifetime. The instruction blew my mind. Since, I’ve opted not to use my breath as a place to steer my attention. For seventeen years of Tibetan practice, I used mantra and specific practices in the Nyingma tradition. Now, I turn primarily to Centering Prayer, which is saying one word to myself as a reminder to drop thought.

BUT…many people balk at the Christian undertones of Centering Prayer, so fine, don’t do it. Don’t do anything that causes more resistance. The point of all this is to rest for a spell, optimally twice a day. Just like you would take the time to brush your teeth, take that time to be in an observant relationship with thought. Watch it come. Watch it go.

Look, thoughts won’t stop. The point isn’t to stop thinking; the point is to observe the thinking. Thought happens, like digestion, like aging, like your heart pumping blood. They come. They go. That’s all. They are a tiny part of being. An ant-sized part of being, in fact. There is so much more. But we have to train to realize this. We also have to train for a long time because we are always in a field of thinking and so think we are our thoughts. But we aren’t. Thoughts are, and they swirl around us like invisible locusts. Every man, woman, and child alive…thinking, thinking, thinking. It’s hard to realize it, but it’s true. Static-thought! More so in the city. MUCH more so when on your phone or computer.

Now, getting past the “yeah, no one will care” thought.

Write that phrase down on a slip of paper and toss it into a jar. Then keep writing. When that phrase comes up again, write it down again. And return to your writing.

A thousand slips of paper in a jar.
A thousand returns to the work at hand.

When the jar is full, do a little ritual and burn the damn things. Up in smoke they go. And start again.

When this happens, especially in memoir, I believe the thinking mind, with its lamentations of no one caring, is likely trying to protect the writer from getting close to a painful story that will require some intense feeling. It’s the equivalent of a mama bird dragging a fake broken wing to get a predator away from her nest.

A great teacher told me, “No one died of crying.” I disagree because I personally hate being that person, but that’s my problem. We are meant to feel and to weep. That’s being a human. That’s having a heart. That’s being alive.

If you must go slowly, go slowly, but continue on your journey because every word you write about your experience changes it, and every ounce of consciousness you bring to your pain eases the suffering of us all.

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

―Carl Gustav Jung

~ Jennifer