Writing As Geometry

Ten or eleven months into my mission, President sat me down for an interview, looked across the room at me with those narrowed, discerning eyes and said, "Sister, you're doing great. But I'm concerned about your weekly letters."

I was very taken aback. This was the one and only interview where I ever cried. I was in an area where I felt like I had a lot to live up to, where I didn't feel like I was--and I was badly shaken. I had just spilled my heart to President. I had just opened the Pandora's box of all my insecurities and doubts and had laid them on the table...but he passed over all of that quickly, and proceeded to give me one of the most important morsels of counsel I ever received--as a missionary and as a human being: "Be careful about the way you write. Because how you write about your experiences shapes the way you actually feel about them. So when you write, focus on the good. I know bad things happen every week--and I still want you to be open and honest in your letters--but focus on the good."

Honesty has always been my bane. I may keep my mouth shut, but what I am actually feeling or thinking will come out someway, somewhere--in my face and my eyes, in my writing, in countless other non-verbal ways. If I am mad, it's obvious. And I will die before I tell someone what I'm feeling if I feel like it will weaken me. (i'm proud like that.) But it will come out, somehow. And as a missionary, my pen utterly betrayed me.

It was a good thing, though, because I learned something important that I have been trying to put into practice--with varying degrees of success--ever since. I learned that it is normal to run through the whole gamut of emotions when a lot is seemingly at stake (How's that for being vague?) and that the good always runs along parallel to the bad. And so it is how you express yourself, verbally or in writing, that actually solidifies how you ultimately feel. So yes, you make a pretty important choice every time you write or speak about an event. Like a reporter, you choose which angle to take on it. You choose how it is recorded forevermore in your own memory and the memories of those that read/hear it.

I think the key is, then, to ignore the impulse to complain. There is a lot worth complaining about in this life. There really is. But actually, there is a whole lot worth praising, too. I'm not trying to be corny (although "keep on the sunny side" from O Brother Where Art Thou did just pop into my head). Ignoring unhappy moments, hurt feelings, disappointments, disillusionment, and every bad thing won't make them go away. (Duh.) But writing about them, and talking about them in the spirit of complaint, only seems to extend their life expectancy, and to afford them greater meaning than they're worth.

Just something I've been thinking about.