What about you?
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I’m an arms-crossed kind of guy and always looking for out-of-place poop.
Flip Wilson’s “Here comes the judge.”
That critical eye made me a natural academic.
Perhaps.
Grammarly doesn’t like that “perhaps.” Too tentative, it tells me.
It’s probably right. Flip’s judge is looking over my other shoulder, nodding its head.
The faces of my internal interlocutors have changed over the years. My mother, 103 in spirit, is still there, occasionally. My dad, not so much. He told me something once and then let it go. Maybe he’s behind the curtain.
Every teacher, coach, mentor, colleague, brother, lover, friend, and American President has taken their turn, except one. No, not him. He’s too busy with real-life judges.
I’ve projected their verdicts onto innocent and not-so-innocent pooches.
And onto you, too. I clapped and commented something nice on your recent story. But really, did it need to be six minutes long?
I’m a little tired of this gavel part of me.
Even Catholic priests retire at 70.
I’ve had 75 years of judging.
Maybe God doesn’t need my help anymore.
It’s long past time for that part of me to recede.
Why do I write stories?
A friend recently asked me why I write stories. It’s a good question. This is Medium story 300.
“It just seems natural,” I replied without much thought.
Of course, with reflection, it’s nothing of the sort for me.
Writing stories came late and coincided with my retirement from teaching Politics in college.
Knowing my friend, I’m guessing he was asking why I write the kind of stories I write, personal reflections, and not essays with the heft of my scholarly expertise.
I know it sounds trite, but I’ve discovered from this three-year 4- 6 a.m. writing routine that it feels good to get things out to you and out of myself.
What kind of things?
Ask yourself:
Do you need another essay on Donald Trump by a so-called expert?
Be honest, wouldn’t you prefer a dog poop story?
With a moral of some sort that may connect to your life.
To Get Over Myself
What about me? What are the things I need to get out of myself?
In a terrific essay I link below, Rick Lewis writes
Life only works when you can get over yourself quickly in the moments that count. Writing is how I get over myself.
To get over my criticality, I need to take it out and see it in the light of day.
Writing helps.
It reinforces awareness.
There it is, on the page.
It’s also over there in how I look at that slightly off-kilter picture frame.
And in my expectations for my son.
It’s everywhere I am.
If I can see it, I can change it.
Judge-Paul, Be Gone.
Third Person Thinking
Some, perhaps my friend, would call this story navel-gazing.
My shirt is tucked in.
But there is a danger.
The late Indian Jesuit priest Anthony De Mello wrote in Awareness about the difference between self-absorption and self-observation.
Self-absorption is self-preoccupation, where you’re concerned about yourself, worried about yourself. Self-observation means to watch everything in you and around you as far as possible, as if it were happening to someone else.
DeMello says the key is not to personalize things.
Even when one is writing about personal things.
Third-person journaling has trained me to distance myself from my anxieties, worries, and problems to manage them better.
I live in the first person.
I write for you in the first person.
But the act of writing helps me think in the third person.
That’s how I try to get over myself.
By uncrossing my arms.
And picking up that poop.
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The title and a quote are from this story by Rick Lewis
