Listen to your heart

People who write for a living, as well as others who want to write, often have asked me for advice. This is probably, like most of life's opportunities, best seen as a function of mathematics.

I just happened to have been born in the second year of the Baby Boom, near the leading edge of a generation that encountered a world in serious need of massive social change -- so we went about the process of forging that change the best we could.

When we are fortunate enough to live in revolutionary times, artists and writers gain influence that, in more somber periods of history, confine us to the margins of society. Maybe a better way to put this, is we are always confined to the margins, for good reason, because whatever it is we have to say, if we are being honest and true to ourselves, is likely to upset the status quo.

So I know that the reason people ask me how to find their writing voice is that I am older than they are, but still of this specific demographic herd born between 1946-1964, and therefore not of the former culture -- the one we collectively rebelled against and rejected.

Meanwhile, whether you are the one asking for help or giving it, any exchange has elements of mutuality, of course. The bigger joy, I believe is giving, but receiving has its moment as well, and learning to receive good advice is an art form of its own.

The same things I am saying about creative efforts can be said of love. I have only fully loved within the confines of my generation, the Baby Boom, as my three great loves differed in age from me by a mathematically pure formula-- 0.8,16. The pattern will be obnoxious to some, as a confirmation of gender inequality, but I bet my mates would beg to differ.

Now, there have been other lovers, as well, and in order to calculate how they fit into this formula I would need a more sophisticated algorithm than is ever going to be employed here. But this piece is not about me, nor my history, it is about the connection between art and love for all of us.

Listen to your heart -- easy to say, hard to do. Also the title of a cheesy popular song. But all too often we live in a strictly cerebral or a strictly physical way. Think about it. We use our brains to make logical decisions, and our bodies to get into all kinds of trouble. But, our hearts, home to the emotions, may be the truest guide to the next step we ought to take.

I don't want to get silly here, but before you say goodbye to someone, listen to your heart. Before you try to tell your story anywhere, in any form, listen to your heart. Write from the heart, from what you feel, and you will never be mistaken.

Living that way, however, carries risks. Living from your heart exposes you to terrible pain, and it is not always possible to recover. In this way, life is like a story, but one without a happy ending.

Romantic stories, my favorites, rely on the narratives of our hearts and their entanglements, and are therefore generally recognized in literature for what they are -- tragedies, not fairy tales. Fairy tales end happily ever after. Love does not necessarily turn out that way. Love can more often end in loneliness, alienation, sadness, anger, confusion, silence.

The saddest of all outcomes,I say, is when your lover tells you that you have taught her that "love is not a fairy tale" just as she is choosing to leave you, therefore taking this lesson away with her, and leaving in its place her lesson for you -- that love is a terrible tragedy, one that ends utterly without hope or any reason to go on at all.