F Is for Fear
Every moment we are young, or as young as we will ever be. We are fresh, or as fresh as we will ever be.
Does this scare you?
It didn’t use to scare me, although I’m not sure I thought about it much before.
But it does scare me now; the seeming pressure of it, the way it feels like life is a loose thread being pulled and pulled.
Pulled by whom? By what? Time? Invisible. Hard to trace — though it does leave its markings (hello, gray hairs and wrinkles that weren’t there four years ago).
This is all to say: I’m sometimes afraid.
Afraid of lack of control. Afraid of the unknown. Afraid of death.
I suspect many feel the same about one or all of those things, and I’m sorry to tell you that this newsletter won’t offer any remedies (unless this missive itself, transmitted through the ether, makes you feel any better.)
Despite this fear, there is also something freeing about being as young as I’ll ever be at this very moment. (Even the second that passed since I punctuated that sentence makes me one second older).
Because, to paraphrase my friend, Antonio, I made this whole thing up. (Antonio was talking about the novel he’s working on, but I think it applies to life, too).
The rules I’ve made for this life of mine? The expectations? Guess what. I made those up.
The creative processes I’ve followed? Also made up.
And because I am born in every moment, every moment presents an opportunity to make up something new.
What Is in Your Pantry?
At a recent Dharma talk offered by Kusa Ivan Mayerhofer, he compared our capacity for compassion, understanding, peace, problem-solving, etc. with looking into our pantry…you know, where that bag of red lentils you thought you'd use has been sitting for six months.
There’s (always!) a lot more in your pantry than you think — literally and figuratively. And this doesn’t just apply to the life challenges you may be facing that require the capacities mentioned above. It also applies to your creative capacities.
Think about your creative pantry — what’s been sitting on the shelves waiting for your attention? What ingredients are there, and how can you combine them to create something fresh?
You don’t need to go shopping for more stuff.
You don’t need to wait for inspiration.
Just check the pantry.
Don’t Be Afraid, Write a Haiku!
I’ve been enjoying haiku lately and listened to Jane Hirshfield give a wonderful talk on them in the following Upaya Zen Center podcast episodes Haiku and Poetry 2025: Poetry As Practice Part 3A and Part 3B.
I encourage you to listen, but if you’re not interested, I’ll share the two writing prompts she offered:
Prompt 1:
To start, scan the world of this moment we are in. What arises? This is your first line.
Listen to what comes in response to whatever arose. This is your second line.
In your third line, relate it all to a season.
Don't think too hard about it — first thought, best thought.
Prompt 2:
The “jisei," or death poem, is a centuries-old Japanese writing tradition wherein one writes a poem in the moments before death. I have a book, “Japanese Death Poems,” by Yoel Hoffmann, with many such poems.
But you can write a death poem at any moment. As Jane Hirshfield said in her talk, “You can write your death poem every year…just so that you’re up to speed on your own relationship [to it] because, after all, you may not have time to write a death poem when the moment comes, and then you’ll have done it already."
So, for this second prompt, try writing a death haiku. (This is a great exercise if you also have a fraught relationship with death).
Here’s what I wrote in response to this prompt:
The last slice of cake. What occasions its eating? Hunger, yes, and —
Every Moment, Every Moment…
“Fate is the future’s past.”
My husband said that to me this week, and it’s what I’ll leave you with today.
Fate will never be in front of you. It will always be behind you.
You can’t change it…but you also can.
Keep making shit up,
Lily
I've heard you should look at yourself today, through the eyes of 10-years-from-now-You, who looks back kindly and thinks: Dang! I was awesome.