Dear Erica, as you now surely know, your mother Lynne Maillet, a fiber artist and blogger, sent me a letter this morning, it was in response to a post I write late Saturday night called “Commit To Your Life,” about committing to a creative life, or a life based on love and not fear. I wrote about the challenges and pressures and joys of that decision.
I don’t know her, but your mother seems quite special to me, she wrote to tell me how much that post meant to her at this time. “My daughter is 19 and a beautiful ballerina,” she wrote.” She is getting lots of peer pressure to go to college, be a nurse, etc. Her heart and love is ballet. I forwarded her your blog post with my notes. The timing was perfect.”
Your mother said she wanted me to know that the idea of committing to one’s life touched both your hearts. I was so struck by the photograph she included in her e-mail. It seemed magical to me, it captured the soul of a young and creative human being setting out in life. The look on your face was as eloquent a statement about committing to life as I can remember seeing or reading.
I asked your mother if I could use the e-mail and the photograph. “Of course,” she replied.
I have a lot of strong ideas about giving and receiving advice, as your mother probably knows. I think the young are well equipped to make their own decisions. But I do feel the moral obligation to sometimes share what I have learned with the young. I have paid dearly for my wisdom, as so many have, this knowledge has often come at the expense of my life and the people I hold dear.
I think you might find, Erica, that the people who become our real friends -and the people who truly love us – cherish our hopes and love and nourish our dreams.
I have heard all of the things in my life and for all of my life that your peers are telling you. Following your heart is rarely the smartest, safest or most secure path. There are so many people in the world eager to tell you why you cannot follow your heart and choose the life that you love. Committing to life makes people uneasy, perhaps because so few can or will do it.
I’m sure you also know better than me by now that the the life of a ballerina, like the life of an artist, a painter, a writer, a carriage horse driver, will not be an easy life in many ways. You will have to scramble for money, work impossibly hard, wake up in fear and confusion many mornings. I have read a lot about a ballerina’s life, and known some ballet dancers. It is a life of great discipline, hard work, fatigue and chance.
There was almost no one in my life who urged me to be a writer, or encouraged me to become one. My father never stopped shaking his head at the path I had chosen, never stopped cautioning me that I would never have a safe career, never have much money, never be as secure as he and almost everyone else in the world wanted to be. My friends all headed to medicine or law school or engineering schools.
One person did tell me I ought to be a writer, and told me I would never regret it. That was my mother. She told me writing was my heart and soul, my love and my passion. If I failed to follow my heart, she said, I would live a hollow life, one with a lot of security and regrets. If I never tried there would always be an empty hole inside of me, my spirit would always be tired and would fade.
Security is a strange thing, in my life I have come to see that it has little to do with money or safe jobs. The price of anything is measured in the amount of life you exchange for it, the price of what many people call security is dear, it is quite often life itself.
Committing oneself to a life of meaning and fulfillment is something open only to human beings, no other animal or creature in the world ever does it or knows that it is. It is the crown jewel of the human spirit, a life of radioactive and ecstatic experience. There is no feeling on the earth more magical than seeing my book in a bookstore, or seeing one’s painting in a gallery, or one’s quilt hanging in a studio. Or, I would imagine from the look of you on your face in the photo, dancing. I had a friend who loved stamps, and he gave up a position in a law form to collect them and write about them. He is no more secure or wealthy than I am, or than you perhaps will be, but we both share the inexpressible joy of loving what we do.
If I were seeking advice about committing to a life, I might consider Henry David Thoreau: “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to life the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
Your mother says she is thrilled that you invited her to attend the meeting with your ballet school teachers to talk about options for your future. That is a great compliment to her.
How wonderful you have a mother who wants this for you if you decide that you want it for yourself. I imagine she is often fearful for you, and how brave she is to put your heart above hers. She understands what it means to commit to life, not simply to exist; to commit to what passes for safety in our world. We are all here at the briefest invitation and pleasure of the fates, we are defined by what we choose to do in that time.
Life is challenging and unpredictable, there are no guarantees, not on Wall Street, not on the dance stage. We all fail sometimes, it is so much better to fail doing what you love – or even better, to succeed at it.
I would guess the peers urging you to be sensible and cautious do not have a mother like yours. We are all prisoners of what we know and see, bounded by our own experience. I hope you will do me the great favor of inviting me to one of your performances, should that come to pass. I will be there.
This is your decision, of course, and only you can make it. I wish you the wind at your back. I hope your angels come to you in a swirling cloud and tap your heart with their wands and sprinkle you with passion dust and inspire you to commit to your life, and a great chorus of songbirds sings hallelujah when you first take the stage.
I will keep this photograph of your living your life and look at it whenever I am urged to confuse security with life.
