7d • General discussion
Dancers dance, firefighters fight.
My niece told me recently she wants to be a writer.
"Do you write a lot?" I asked.
"No. Not much."
"Why not?"
"I don't really have time. But I like to write."
"I see. But you want to be a writer?"
"I do."
"What do firefighters do?" I asked.
"Fight fires."
"Right. And what do dancers do?"
She scrunched her forehead at me. "Dance?"
"Right. Have you ever seen a dancer who said, 'I'd like to dance, but it's hard to find the time.'?"
She tilted her head and smirked at me. "I see where you're going, Uncle Shawn."
"Do you?"
"Yes. You're saying if I want to be a writer, I need to go write," she said.
"Kind of," I said, "it's a little different."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, stop wanting. When you want to be something, you'll only ever want to be it. Skip wanting and just BE it. No one ever wanted to become a dancer and then miraculously became a dancer. They started dancing and became a dancer. Firefighters don't want to become firefighters - they go to the fire station, get trained, and start fighting fires. It's the same with writing. If you just want to be a writer, you'll want to do it your whole life, but you'll never do it. Skip the wanting and just go write. It doesn't have to be pretty, or profound, or neat, or spelled correctly. It just has to be words from your mind and your heart that you share."
And then dinner was ready.
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Dancers dance, firefighters fight.
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