On Dreamshaping: The Empty Handed Life

Mark McNease

On Dreamshaping is a weekly blog about shaping the dreams we live.

Hands aren’t only for holding and grasping—they’re also for teaching us what it’s like to surrender, palms up, empty handed. The nothing we find there is often the something we need.

It’s hard to let go of our many identities. Getting up and writing has been ‘who I am’ for forty years or so. The fear we all have is that when something leaves our lives, whether it’s a job, or a creative activity, or a person, we won’t know who we are without it. This is acutely present with caregivers: taking care of someone becomes our identity, and when that person is gone, the loss is compounded by losing the sense of self it gave us: what am I going to do now? How will I spend my days or nights? What will define me?

I experience this with writing and the compulsion to create. When I don’t do either on any given morning, I feel as if something has been missed, or slipped away from me. And yet, I’ve written ten novels, countless short stories, articles, scripts, you name it. For the past eight years it’s been all about the murder mysteries and fiction. To not get up and write these things leaves me feeling as if my life is somehow ending, that I have no use other than as a man who writes fiction. That cannot be the case! I may not write another book. I may not write another mystery or thriller. But I will always create, which is what I’m doing now. And I will always write. Putting words on (figurative) paper is what I do, and there’s nothing wrong with allowing that to always be a focal point of my life. But I won’t allow it, as of now, as of this Dreamshaping, to determine my sense of value in this world.

Maybe I’ll write another murder mystery, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll write another column, maybe I won’t. It’s the doing that matters. I will create. I will put something out into the world, and I will do it almost ever day. (Taking breaks, and allowing myself to not do anything, as well as to do something, is key to finding balance and calm.)

PS, I’m going barefoot. Now that winter is over, I want to experience the sensation of not wearing socks all the time. What does the floor feel like? What does the kitchen tile feel like? What does the grass feel like? It’s part of my effort to create new experiences, or to allow myself to have ones that have always been available. It’s my dream, and I’ll partake if I want to.

Dreamshaping … on shaping reality and living our dreams.