Jen Knox's Blog, page 15
February 5, 2024
On memory & the muse
“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.” ― Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Creativity became my spirituality when I was somewhere around twenty. Maybe because I grew up with it, disowned it, then reclaimed it. Maybe because I needed its medicine. Either way, it felt otherworldly to express curiosity, joy and pain in ways I couldn’t allow to surface off the page.
The paper in my journal felt, if not safe, urgent. It offered me a different perspective, a new vista of the past, and a reminder of the magic I believed in when I was a small child. The magic I saw in others, in nature, and myself.
At first, it felt as though this urgency was coming from nowhere, as though a muse had arrived and that was that. But I now think of my muse as a perfect mixture of attention and memory. It is only with the ripening of certain memories, after all, and a willful attention to life today that we can find the desire to invent (and reinvent).
Memories that are inaccessible on the surface are still quite present in our lives. They can be tapped for our creative efforts, but it’s not always easy or predictable. The problem of repressed memories—beyond fallibility and emotional trickiness—is that they often materialize with force and present an unwanted, ill-timed obstacle course that pushes us to mental extremes. If explored, however, the memory may feed something unexpected and beautiful.
I'm learning it's not that easy though. When writing to tap memory or because a memory arises, it is necessary to slow down the process and truly approach it with tenderness and care.
It was shared with me by a brilliant woman I recently met that to offset the onslaught of media and hyperspeeds of the world, the best practice is to revisit familiar spaces and notice the subtle changes. In other words, walk the same block you always do with ease and attention. Walk it again and ask yourself what’s changed.
To do so—to repeat—soothes the creative mind and allows us to get to the space we need to be to go to the deeper places that only dedicated writers know. The place I called spiritual earlier, which could also be called flow.
Here, we can journey safely, but not without reawakening the emotions of times past. The joyous memories warm us when we feel frozen by inaction and remind us how temporary and beautiful the cycles of life are. The difficult ones test us and nudge us toward our deeper selves.
If memories are a struggle to capture, there’s always a sensation to act as our portal. This is the ultimate foundational writing advice: note the smell or sound we remember, the temperature of the room and the texture of the hardwood floors, or the busy-patterned carpet we sat on as a child. If the memories are still stubborn, walk the path again. Explore the same paragraph, the same textures and scents, and joys and pains. Write that paragraph over and over, until it becomes something more like a door that you can walk through and into the creative depths.
Creative prompt: Describe a place where you were exposed to a new idea, through a book or conversation. How can this memory of place intermingle with where you are right now?
February 1, 2024
Quick fix practice
Take a few minutes to melt stress and reset your energy. This is an excellent SOS meditation and one that you can repeat for more enduring stressors in your life. It includes visualization and simple mindful attention.
Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash
On the equidistance
Hi, friends. It’s Imbolc, the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, this is a brilliant day indeed. I walked my dogs at 4:30 a.m., and a deer began to follow us. It was healthy and interested in our early-morning purpose. The dogs wanted to play with it, and then we saw an entire family of deer looking on ahead. It felt like a true taste of the spring energy to come. I, for one, am ready.
That said, winter lingers. We lost power for a short time last week when it was bitterly cold, but this too was a call to gratitude for the warmth I so often take for granted. I wrote what follows in the present tense to capture something that felt urgent, and I thought I’d share . . . I’ll keep this one to paid subscribers because I might publish some tweaked version of it down the line.
🔆 Wishing you all warmth. Blessed Imbolc. ( ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)ഒ🔆
Photo by Laila Gebhard
January 29, 2024
Following the Pain
This is a sample of a 2-day course I have at Insight Timer. I hope some of you find it useful as it is needed. As usual, I am sharing what has helped me at times.
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very thin…
January 23, 2024
On attention
Too many creative people I know have had difficulty concentrating in the last few years, especially when it comes to reading and capturing their own stories on the page. These are people who love literature, and who recognize the power of storytelling to drive human connection and compassion. They know the value, yet they feel helpless to busyness.
Everyone contends with distractions, of course, but I wonder whether highly creative people are even more susceptible due to their curiosity about the world.
When I coach writers, many say they are simply unable to focus because there’s too much going on, so I offer exercises and often invite a writer to work with me in real-time. We write and sometimes read together. We make lists. We look at their topic through a narrower or broader lens.
If you can relate to this creative struggle, and you have a minute (quite literally) and access to a clockface in your home or here, let’s experiment. See if you can watch the second hand for a full rotation without breaking your gaze or clicking something else. If such an exercise is too hard, try again later or start with 30 seconds, or even 15, and see if you fare better.
Despite a distracting world, we can rebuild our stamina, and it’s remarkable how a single minute (or less) can ground us. I share this because creatives need to be ready to rebuild our ability to do the thing we love in a way tech cannot.
It’s common to joke about our lowered attention spans. So many have trouble focusing enough to read or connect with friends over lunch without looking at their phones a dozen or more times. Still, the truth is that we’re missing out on more than our distracted minds allow us to imagine.
Long before the collective love affair with mobile devices, AI, and auto-correct/suggest, I was ahead of the game. I had a wildly distracted mind. I had trouble reading and focusing, and my mind would wander with the same velocity as the most annoying pop-up ad.
Those who have felt anxiety can relate. Anxious states of mind call us toward distraction even during the most mundane or unthreatening of circumstances. Over the years, I’ve come to correlate anxiety with creative energy because my anxiety always felt like creativity that ran amok.
Perhaps that’s why my writing was always described as “dark” when I started publishing (case in point).
When we have no channel, creative energy builds and can combine with negative stimuli to create pretty vivid pictures. This is why writing has been so pivotal in my human journey so far, at least from a developmental perspective. It helped me to reign in a distracted mind.
Alongside this personal realization came tech and more tech and layered tech, and I realized that while I no longer suffer from anxiety (long story — I’ll tell it sometime), save for a few acute examples, I do have the same sense of distraction and misuse of energy when I am on social media for too long or clicking news story after news story to try to figure out all the angles on an issue.
This simple clock-face practice is one that I like because it doesn’t feel as ritualized or time-consuming as sitting to meditate the way I might at the end of the day. Simply watching the clock for a minute at work or amidst whatever distracting things are happening in the world can truly slow the mind enough that we can pivot to a more creative and generative mind state.
And this is what leads to writing. If there’s time, if we make time, writing is the panacea. Yep, I said it. It’s alchemy and science and has been empirically evaluated by many. Not just me. Stories alter our world, and we must share them.
Sure, we might have to work through a bit of distraction (see clockface exercise above) to find the solidity to write or read, but when we do, I think it might be more valuable than it’s ever been.
You write in order to change the world … if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it. —James Baldwin
Next week’s post will be on winter and memory. xo Jen
January 15, 2024
On peace: a meditation
I read this every year on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. His message and presence were gifts to the world, as are all who share his dedication to equality, peace, and love. Thank you to everyone courageous enough to offer compassion in a world full of peril.
January 11, 2024
On knowing how this will end
What makes the story worth telling today is different than what made it worth telling yesterday.
Photo by Joanna KosinskaAs I get older, I find myself annoyed when I guess how a book or movie will end. It’s happening more often. “It’s the brother who started that rumor—it has to be him,” I’ll say about some series, and my husband will roll his eyes.
“The brother for sure. We’ll find out in episode 6. Or 7.”
As we accumulate experience, we see patterns with more clarity (hopefully), and this is a gift. The beauty of aging, after all, is that it comes with discernment. But the polarity is that novelty can be increasingly difficult to find.
I recently attended a short class on writing, for instance (which was a glorious feeling because I’m usually on the teaching end of such things), and it all felt a little too familiar. From the intros to the request for trigger warnings to the prompt and reflection. This particular course was about how to pace nonfiction, which has been my genre of choice for the last year, and I wanted to get some ideas for a few new essays.
When our enthusiastic and whipsmart instructor offered our first assignment, I felt my stomach sink. It’s one I’ve taught in many workshops, and when I heard her instructions, that been there, done that feeling revved up. I started thinking about all the housework I could catch up on in this hour and a half.
The assignment is one you may have taught or learned as well. It’s a good one. It begins with creating a timeline, from birth to now, and identifying moments in that timeline that felt like transitions or shifts in the way you saw the world. The most poignant memories.
I love giving this assignment because it’s solid and reliable. It produces material for most writers, and you can position these moments in times through various sensory entry points (remember what you felt, remember what you saw, etc…). But because it was so familiar, I just kept thinking, “I know how this will end.”
I’d explored the timeline of my life ad nauseam, so with my cursor circling the Leave Meeting button, I had a little discourse with myself and decided No. I’d paid $60 for this class, so I was going to stick with it. Why not practice what I’ve purported here and elsewhere many times? Why not adopt the yogic concept of a “beginner’s mind.”
I dropped my narrative about the been there, done that. And, folks, it was WELL worth it.
When I stopped trying to predict the end of the workshop and what it might bring, and instead asked myself—as though it was the first time—what felt urgent to me today, something novel arrived. What I realized (or remembered) is important for creative people to return to often.
Our view of the world is always changing. What is resonant on Monday is different than what it was fourteen Mondays ago, maybe even a few days ago.
And this is the beauty of writing. It will always be there for us with something new. Any creative act will. Creative output is never exhausted or done. Each day, we have something new to offer because we have gathered more input, have found new ways to see, and find ourselves in a different emotional/spiritual/philosophical state.
Michel de Montaigne recognized this in the 16th century. Sometimes referred to as the grandfather of the personal essay and a great influence on my early nonfiction writing, Montaigne famously returned to his essays (usually titled something similar to what I’m doing here “On [Something]”), and he’d add new thoughts as he gained insight and life experience, numbering his additions to watch how his outlook or beliefs had changed.
We can do this, too. Every day is an opportunity to create something from a slightly different angle. And to do so while still sharing authenticity and still offering all the wisdom we have today. If we adopt Montaigne’s commitment to self-study, it can be all the more interesting to revisit what we thought we knew.
Writing Prompt: Go back to something you’ve explored before (in any genre/medium). What’s changed in the way you see this scene/subject?
Special note: I’d like to invite you to an online reading on Saturday (1/13). I’ll be sharing a very short story inspired by my studies on charisma that appeared in The Shape of a Curve . RSVP here.
January 4, 2024
On perfection(ism)
"It’s a relief that I'm not physically perfect. I don’t want to be sacrificed to the gods." —Irene Meder (my grandmother)
Should we strive for perfection, always challenging ourselves to grow and master our domains, or should we practice radical self-acceptance and understand that there is no improving what is present?
Many of my high-performing students and friends are perfectionists, and they are wonderful humans. Their desire to be better, to grow and thrive, motivates them and helps them to cultivate self-awareness.
They listen to folks like Andrew Huberman to try to optimize their brains and bodies to show up as their happiest, best selves. They study leadership because they want to be the ones at the helm, benevolent and kind leaders who will model a better way. They study mindfulness in a desire to better understand their minds.
They want to write stories that will create bridges of human experience that welcome more empathy and are also beautifully rendered and without flaw.
But what does a student do when they have quirks that do not align with the science of optimization? Perhaps many even have physical characteristics that make impossible the nose-only breathing and green juice diets prescribed by the jiujitsu-practicing, mega-meditating neuroscientists from the Ivys.
What if their personality does not align with the competencies science says are optimal for a leader, or their writing style is not en vogue? What if they are facing traumas from destructive people or experiences in their lives?
It’s heartening to think that all the difficult things and traumas are teachers and said teachers make us stronger. But I can say from experience that some difficulties just slow us down. To think trauma is all part of the training justifies pain and constructs a story around injustice that attempts to minimize its effects.
I’m not saying we should dwell in pain, but we can’t muscle up and say it’s a gift either. Pain is just pain. Injustice sucks. Anything about us that makes us less able to find perfection can feel like a true barrier.
But we are crafty humans who are never stagnant. And pain is also part of a journey. Besides, as my grandmother’s quote suggests, perfection might come with its own unique and dire consequences, so we should love and embrace our flaws and tragic stories. Relish our imperfections, because they are what make us human. Right?
As a child, all I wanted was to fix my teeth. I wrote an essay about this, which won the San Miquel de Allende Prize. I’ll be honored to read it at the conference in a few months (link here). I truly believed that my teeth held me back from a better, more perfect life because they made me look poor or defective. Also, from what my child self saw, a woman’s value was her appearance. Simple but honest thinking, if I do say so myself. One could argue that my teeth didn’t truly matter, my self-love did, but this feels dishonest to me.
I did fix my teeth, and it changed the way I felt about my smile. It also changed the way some (perhaps many) people responded to me when I spoke. To have straight teeth was a relief. It was one less worry.
The definition of perfect is not impossible. It means, after all, “having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be” (Oxford Languages). We can desire ourselves exactly as we are and still want to fix what doesn’t sit right.
Perfection is within our grasp if we want to be loyal to this definition. But do we want to be as good as it is possible to be? Perhaps the trick is figuring out what matters to us versus what we’re told matters.
When I work with leadership and writing students alike and I encounter perfection(ism), I try to discourage it. I tell them to mess up gloriously, to make mistakes, and to relish in them.
I advocate for self-acceptance, replete with self-deprecating humor because it is what reminds us that we are not here to rebuild ourselves once we’re built. Instead, we’re here to journey around, to climb mountains and look around, just to see.
Sure, we can fix our teeth and comb our hair. We can appreciate what we see as perfection in others, and we can taste what it is to be our best selves, but we always have to begin again and recognize that ultimately we are on a planet of people who have endured pains and will continue to endure pains. Often unjustified. And individuals cannot all abide by the same rules, no matter how precise science gets.
One thing I am clear about is pain is not what makes a person who they are. Who they are endures despite. Trauma and barriers to wellness or lack of resources are distractions. Merely there. Not unique, to be glorified, to be ignored, or to be placated while on a quest for perfection. Pain simply is. The idea of perfection simply is. The two are at opposite ends of the balance beam, and the fulcrum point is the human.
Photo by JC Dela Cuesta We are always balancing and trying out new viewpoints, and we are forever ascending or descending something. Physically, mentally, or otherwise.
Perhaps perfectionism is just another version of pain, a distraction from the idea that we are on a journey here, and compassion must be a part of it — more so than justification (or a quest for justice).
Okay, maybe this is my thesis: Compassion is the teacher I want to walk with because it is the only thing I can find that puts both pain and perfection in perspective. It reminds us to look around and appreciate the view, even if we don’t climb to the same heights we thought we might.
And when we can do that no matter our vantage point, we can fix what we want to fix and also see more than the orderliness of a smile.
How do you practice compassion?
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December 27, 2023
On awe
“Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.” — Dacher Keltner
When have you been in or witnessed awe?
Photo by Miguel Salgado I’ve felt it in response to a line of prose or poetry that turned my worldview inside out, and I’ve felt something like it after losing all sense of self in art or dance. I once saw a puppy look up in awe at a heron swooping low above him. A friend and mentor once led me through a meditation that filled me with awe.
But when I turn this word over in my mind what sticks out to me most are the unsung acts of kindness.
A teacher makes sure that everyone gets a chance to speak. An unexpected acknowledgment arrives after years of silent service. A child with fresh stitches from a neighbor’s dog bite sits up in the hospital room to ask if the dog and owner are okay.
Awe arrives when forgiveness is granted genuinely. When envy is devoured by love. When a hungry person offers half their sandwich or a terrified worker finds the courage to stand up against the status quo. Awe is watching the stillness of nature as it rides the currents of change. Awe is feeling a glimpse of relief from the twisting of severe pain. It’s what you receive when you give from a place of seeming lack.
When I was a child, I was often awestruck. Mostly by nature but also by the myriad stories I saw unfolding around me always. Nothing was boring then. Everyone was fascinating. Everything pulsed with possibility.
Then something changed. I began to feel a pressure to know, recite, and define everything by certain standards. I decided I had to understand what I saw and why it mattered.
All of this classical way of knowing can be good, but it can also make us forget or mistrust feelings of awe. It took me decades to remember to allow the feeling again. But today, I sit in awe.
I am on the couch, warmed by my dogs, and I feel stunned by the beauty of the moment. Their gentle snores are rhythmic, and my legs are heavy. The silence and unlikely warmth of a quiet day after Christmas offer a settled feeling, despite knowing that much work awaits.
I’m a huge fan of intention-setting for any period, and a new calendar year is the perfect opportunity. While many are resolution-allergic, I believe the intention, the resolve, and the focus of forward momentum are not about denying the present but acknowledging it and preparing for the mystery ahead.
To intend can simply mean taking stock and being hopeful for the future.
All of my writing this past year has been an aim to show the beauty in what seems dire. I haven’t always succeeded, and that’s fine. I believe any lack in this area is not due to time, skill, or energy but rather forgetfulness. Sometimes I forget, and perhaps we all do, to recognize all the moments of awe.
My one resolution in 2024 is to remember to live in a state of awe as often as possible. This requires a bit of humility. And I have to indulge it even if there are no words.
To remember to see this world as what it truly is, despite its pains and perils—to see a complex pattern of wonder that we need not understand but merely take in and explore gently is the aim.
In the spirit of the forthcoming year change, I wish you well. I hope what I share here nudges something in you, and whether it does or not, I’d love to know . . .
What brings you awe?
December 14, 2023
On the ocean
Today I stood at the mouth of the ocean somewhere in Mexico. It was a windy day. As I stared out toward the waves, trying to find a meditative mind while also staying upright, I was reminded how revelatory nature’s momentum can be.
As the waves crashed against my legs and torso, I steadied, but as they receded, the sand beneath the balls of my feet was swept away. My heels were dug in, which meant I was swept backward.
Again and again. Crash. A thrust back.
We all hold our weight either in the front or the back of the body. We brace ourselves for what we expect to change. So as I stood there, I sought balance, and I began to lean in. I think I’ll keep trying to do the same.
For those not able to make it to the ocean today, a breath practice that I love when I need to come back to center and find calm is below.
I am signing off for now, and I’m going to experiment with trying this thing called vacation. We’ll see how it goes . . .
xo Jen
