Acceptable Gifts

I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was thirteen. What I didn’t know is what I wanted to write. At that time, I read a lot of fantasy literature, and so that’s what I wrote.

Then I stopped reading fantasy and discovered the Modernists like Hemingway and Faulkner and the more contemporary stylists like Vladimir Nabokov and William Kennedy and so I thought I wanted to write that kind of fiction. However, the stories I wrote felt stilted and constructed rather than fresh and imagined. I was trying to imitate what a story was like rather than just tell one.

Then, in my Freshman year in college, my composition professor asked the class to write what he called a descriptive essay. He read an example from a former student, an adjective-filled portrait of a wrestling team’s locker room. Hearing it, I thought, “I can do better than that.”

Fueled by my natural competitiveness, I wrote a piece about running in a big track meet, all the sensory detail plus what it meant to me personally, the comradery of a shared challenge. It was a personal essay, though I didn’t know that. In my mind, it was just an assignment for a class I didn’t feel I should need to take, so it didn’t matter, and so I put no pressure on myself.

The day after we handed in the assignment, my professor read my piece aloud to the class, saying that in all the years he’d been teaching the class this was the best descriptive essay he’d ever received. I was stunned. He told me he looked forward to seeing my work reviewed in the New York Times. I wrote another personal essay for the class about a time some girls shouted some comments about my butt from across a ballfield and how I didn’t like it one little bit. He read that aloud as well.

It was the most praise I had ever received for anything I had ever written. It was also the easiest thing I had ever written. I understood the form intuitively, that the stories needed to have lessons and that they weren’t really about me, they were about what life had taught me. Writing them, I wasn’t trying to be clever or smart. I told the stories as if I were talking to someone but with more time to get the words just right.

And so, did that class begin a career writing personal essays? No, it did not. I would go on to write many things–poetry, sketch comedy, screenplays, and fiction–with very little success. I would not, however, write another personal essay for twenty-five years. Even then, it would take me five years of writing one-a-day for the magazine I edited to accept that I preferred that form to all others.

My resistance to doing what came easiest to me was illuminating. There had been so many clues glowing brightly along the path I was otherwise determined to follow, clues I ignored because I had made a decision, damn it, and also because novelists were the people whom I admired most. Being anything other than a novelist, with the possible exception of songwriter, seemed like accepting an arranged marriage rather than one of love.

Though, in truth, I was doing just the opposite. It was as if my ego had arranged a career for me, and I just accepted it until I could no longer bear the discomfort and demanded a divorce. Looking back, the transparent shallowness of my choice seems quite obvious, but I assure you, it wasn’t at the time. At the time, it was as if I was incapable of imagining writing anything but fiction, as if I had forgotten any other form of writing and storytelling existed.

It’s great to have challenges, to push yourself beyond what you think you’re capable of, to question your own limitations, but I believe you will never go wrong doing what comes easiest and most naturally. The great challenge may actually be recognizing the value of what comes easily. Doesn’t the gold wait for us at the top of the mountain, there to be earned with the labor of struggle and perseverance? What came easily wasn’t earned at all, you just have it. Why, it’s as if you were born with gold, and indeed you were.

Perhaps this is why so many of us resist what comes easiest. This way, we can struggle, and suffer, and complain, and persevere, and finally, after long nights of mysterious anguish, after failure, after drinking too much, after feeling hopeless and lost, we accept the gift we were given to start the whole long journey–and we are home.

—

This post is republished on Medium.

***

The Good Men Project gives people the insights, tools, and skills to survive, prosper and thrive in today’s changing world. A world that is changing faster than most people can keep up with that change. A world where jobs are changing, gender roles are changing, and stereotypes are being upended. A world that is growing more diverse and inclusive. A world where working towards equality will become a core competence. We’ve built a community of millions of people from around the globe who believe in this path forward. Thanks for joining The Good Men Project.