When we reach reflexively for something to dull an ache inside of us, in that very moment of reaching, we are hiding from our pain. We're storing it away. Tamping it down.
Interpretation
Avoiding emotional pain often leads to temporary solutions rather than healing.
Dani Shapiro's quote reflects on the human tendency to seek out distractions or numbing mechanisms whenever we experience emotional discomfort. Instead of confronting our pain and allowing ourselves to feel it, we might instinctively reach for external solutions that only suppress our true feelings, ultimately hindering genuine healing and self-awareness.
In practice
In a therapy session when discussing coping mechanisms for emotional pain.
The writing life requires courage, patience, persistence, empathy, openness, and the ability to deal with rejection. It requires the willingness to be alone with oneself. To be gentle with oneself. To look at the world without blinders on. To observe and withstand what one sees. To be disciplined, and at the same time, take risks. To be willing to fail - not just once, but again and again, over the course of a lifetime.
Writing well involves walking the path of most resistance. Sitting still, being patient, allowing the lunatic dream to take shape on the page, then the shaping, the pencil on the page, breathing, slowing down, being willing–no, more than willing, being wide open–to press the bruise until it blossoms.
Confidence is highly overrated when it comes to creating literature. A writer who is overly confident will not engage in the struggle to get it exactly right on the page - but rather, will assume that she's getting it right without the struggle.
I try to remember that the job - as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy - of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.
Playing the game I have learned the meaning of humility. It has given me an understanding of futility of the human effort.
The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going.
There may be some substitute for hard facts, but if there is, I have no idea what it can be.
If you would listen, sir, in the sense of being aware of your conflicts and contradictions without forcing them into any particular pattern of thought, perhaps they might altogether cease.
Do not go to the garden of flowers!_x000D_ O friend! go not there;_x000D_ In your body is the garden of flowers._x000D_ Take your seat on the thousand petals of the_x000D_ lotus, and there gaze on the infinite beauty.
If one were to bring ten of the wisest men in the world together and ask them what was the most stupid thing in existence, they would not be able to discover anything so stupid as astrology.
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