The Parable of the Fly

By Lacey Gunter

My husband is a fresh air junky.  He has a very difficult time existing without a lot of outside doors and windows being open.  As such, we usually have a constant influx of flies in our house for all but the coldest months.  This gives me a lot of time to observe their behavior.

It never ceases to amaze me how many times a fly can ram full force into a light bulb thinking maybe this time it will work.  One can admire these flies for their persistence, but is still doesn't get them to where they want to be.

Not every fly is like this. Some go exploring, albeit haphazardly, but exploring none the less. Usually, these are the flies that make it out.  One might try to argue that these flies just gave up on their goal and only came upon a working solution by chance.  But I would argue their persistence was the same, it was their methods that differed, which in the end let to success.

What can we learn from these two types of flies? One has laser focus and drives continually forward on what he believes to be the right path. Yet time and time again he fails and refuses to broaden his perspective. The other one appears to wander, in what seems to the onlooker to be an aimless pattern, but his strategy leads to success more often than not.

This is a scenario I come across sometimes in statistics and probability.  What seems to be the intuitive best choice can actually end up giving you sub-par results.

Often in our writing and our parenting we can get stuck thinking there is a certain correct way of doing things.  Even though the way has yet to achieve the results we believe it should be achieving, we tell ourselves that if we just keep doing it, eventually it will work out the way we want it to.  It may be our writing process, the way we choose to discipline a child or even a long list of jobs or activities we believe we have to maintain.  We keep treading this same path, not because it has made us a better writer or a better mother, but because we know it and are more comfortable sticking with what we already know.  We then reassure ourselves by saying success only comes through persistence.
 
Well ladies, persistence is a good thing, but only when it is coupled with wisdom and learning.   Otherwise, we are just ramming our heads into the light over and over and over again.  We need to also be willing to step back and ask, is there something I can learn and improve upon from this experience?  Is there another perspective I can take that will help me see the bigger picture? This may require us to seek direction through inspiration, which to the naive onlooker may look like aimless wandering. But with the Master as our guide, the person whose perspective is eternal, we kind find the correct path to follow. It will still require persistence. We may have to travel through many different doorways and rooms. But at least in the end we will find our way out. 

Some thoughts on writing, poetry, and other stuff

I have a thousand ideas for my contribution to this blog. Some of them have been floating in the ether for so long they are no more than wispy tendrils of thought; others hit me like a ton of bricks and I can't stop thinking about them. But tonight, I was looking through older posts making sure that a particular thing I wanted to say about poetry wasn't something I'd already said before, and I read a few of my older posts. To make it even better, I read the comments to those posts.

I won't go into all my posts. You can do that if you'd like. But I did learn something amazing. As I read those words, first of all, I felt eloquent for the first time in a long time. Some of that stuff is pretty good! I also heard my voice speaking so lovingly to myself, sounding like a long-lost friend, encouraging me, making me laugh, and reminding me of important truths. Here are a few:

--Don't stop starting over
--What you are is enough
--Remember that you were put on this crazy planet to change it for the better--and if God didn't think know you could do it, you wouldn't be here
--Practice makes perfect, even when we hate practicing so much because we're not perfect.
-- You've spent your whole life becoming who you are, and who you are is wonderful! Let that line shine!

I could go on. My point is that these are things I have forgotten. Scratch that. I haven't forgotten them. I've buried them in my mind and heart under giant piles of inferiority complex, laundry, and to-do lists. Reading them has already strengthened me.

How great would it be if I were writing like this in my own personal journal? How wonderful if I could read the words I wrote as I read the scriptures or pondered the words of the Prophet, and then when I had a hard day, I could gain strength from my own thoughts and feelings?

Of course, when I say "I," I mean "we." :)

Now, another thought--my original one. It's simple and it's not mine:

Wow, that's even related to my previous thoughts. How great is that?

Back to a sister from the old, pre-split Westside Stories chapter of ANWA. She said, more than once, to "write your truth."  I know this comes from Ernest Hemingway. Here is his full quote, discussing what he did when he got stuck in writing. He would tell himself:  

'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.'

So when we are writing poetry, we start with truth. We seek for truth. Sometimes it is with flowery words, sometimes we fit our truth into metered patterns and forms and sometimes we don't. I've said before that my poetry is for me, and that holds true. When I read it, after the fact, I'm often transported to whatever place and time I occupied when I wrote it. If I share it, I do so with hopes that it will help someone else to understand themselves through their reaction to my words; but if they don't, it's okay. Years later, I'll come back to it and find self-understanding and deeper meaning again and again. In that way poetry is like those old blog posts; voices from an old friend who knows me better than I know myself and is reaching out to leave me little treasures of wisdom. 

What have you learned from your writing? What gems of self-discovery have you found?