this is long

I wonder if one of the greater attractions offered by religion comes from the fondness we human animals have for narrative. We sure like stories. Ambiguous endings (ever see Picnic at Hanging Rock?) may be fodder for philosophical discussion, but our blockbusters almost invariably offer roundly satisfying closure.

Religion may offer a means of thinking about our otherwise confusing lives as stories in which, somehow or other, the struggles must make sense. Personally, my nature requires me to reject arrant materialism (by which I mean the philosophical, not consumeristic sense of the word.) There is a bit too much synchronicity in the universe for me to utterly discount the experiences we tend to categorize as “spiritual.” Whether there are guides at work, or whether it’s a matter of the ineffable magic of quantum entanglement, there is interaction on a plane that has always prompted humans to imagine beyond the absolutely tangible. I’m just not going to try to tell you exactly what, and I don’t think that’s anyone else’s job either.

All this is just a way of saying that—whatever I proceed to write in the following paragraphs—I maintain a meta-view of the whole business as inexplicable and quite possibly nonsensical. Or, to put it another way, when I describe states of “mind,” or things which occur to my own brain, I am as aware as anyone of the weaknesses inherent in that particular organ. Caveat Cogitor.

About 13 years ago, when I was 37, I was struck—quite instantaneously—by a calling. I’m going to call it a calling, because I don’t know what a calling is if not that. A sense that you’ve been handed a destiny...please proceed. Because it is the only calling I’ve ever downloaded from the cosmic cloud, it is unique in my experience. It was to write. It didn’t come with any further instructions, which is kind of a nuisance.

Thomas Edison is reported to have said that genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration. When that ripe patch of my neurons lit up with my “calling,” they fished around a bit, but couldn’t find the missing 1%. Apparently (I had to assume) it was either invisible, or to be provided later. So I proceeded to do the 99% part. You can find that 99% at my website, www.emilygillespieclement.com. Don’t do that right now. There’s something missing there. (hint: 1%)

Meanwhile, Jeff got unwell. It may not be obvious, because I am of a fairly stoic persuasion and do not like to cry at movies and so forth, that Jeff was, for 20ish years, the ballast of my emotional schooner. People who know Jeff will understand this. It’s true.

Ok, so here’s where ballasts, missing percents, and narratives all fall into the same stewpot:

A few years after that light bulb moment I refer to as a calling, Jeff began to malfunction. Within a very few more years it was hard to dispute that his malfunction would be progressive and terminal. I won’t go into excessive detail here about what that realization meant to me, except to say that an essential and depended on nutrient had been yanked from my diet and I was going to have to learn to live without it.

And somewhere in that confusing fog of years which contained increasing failure and a hard road to diagnosis, I accepted a sort of plea bargain with the cosmos (or at least my sense of it) in an effort to recapture a whiff of purpose. (As someone recently said to me, purpose is largely imaginary, isn’t it? Probably so, but it does help feed that yearning for a narrative.) Anyway, it went something like this–While there was no parity whatsoever in the exchange, I reckoned that in losing Jeff I would at least not be left without a life objective. Because, see, of that calling. Obviously I was supposed to write, and obviously the cosmos would provide some sort of external validation for that, sooner or later.

Sooner or later. My function--because it was the only part over which I had any control--would be to keep applying the 99%. So I did. The results are there.

Okay, so as it turns out, those four books basically stink. I can accept that, and I can die whenever that becomes an appropriate move without being mad at myself, because I did my part. (And I don’t mean anything by making that past tense. I’ll almost undoubtedly keep trying.) I would be mad at myself if I got to the end of the road and could make no sense of the narrative because I’d failed to produce. So, if you ever wonder why I keep doing it, that’s why.

Inspiration, the elusive 1%, must come from somewhere. If it doesn’t, well...someone/something/some ethereal other didn’t uphold its end of the bargain.

I have used my Salieri (from the play Amadeus) analogy before, but that’s because it fits. Yo...cosmos...don’t go handing out callings then fail to deliver inspiration. Not to worry. I will not try to poison Mozart, or Philip Pullman, or Louis Sachar, or any of the local writers you wish to point out to me who are being featured in the Annapolis paper. But I will be reminded of the 1% that isn’t there, and I will need to find a quiet way to quell the anger it stirs up.

Nonsense, of course. This is all a misunderstanding of life, flowing from my very human preference for a narrative. Meanwhile, I have fine things to enjoy, in the form of some of the loveliest people to have ever borrowed some of my DNA. Not to mention plenty of other folks. No argument.

But maybe this explains, a little bit, why I think it’s more therapeutic for me to think about spiritual practices that are more about relinquishing attachment to outcome. I guess you might say I pray sort of...but never as a petition, or adoration, or expiation, or any of the ways by which prayer is classically defined. I’m looking more for a sense of openness to whatever is, and also I don’t like going to bed alone. As for the tradition in which I grew up, it seems to like to place too much emphasis on narrative. And narrative, as far as I can discern, is a booby-trap. Let’s leave that to fiction. Preferably, fiction forged in a mind where the 1% actually made a pitstop.