The purpose of the first draft is not get it right, but to get it written" - John Dufresne

Hi, there. How’ve you been? I just finished the newest book from Sheila Heti called Pure Colour and it took my breath away. She opens up the book with the idea that we are all living in the first draft of God’s creation of the world, she says:

“After God created the heavens and the earth, he stood back to contemplate creation, like a painter standing back from the canvas.This is the moment we are living in - themoment of God standing back. Who knows how long it has been going on for? Since the beginning of time, no doubt. But how long is that? And for how much longer will it continue?You’d think it would only last a moment, this delay of God standing back, before stepping forward again to finish the canvas, but it appears to be going on forever. But who knows how long or short this world of ours seems from the vanishing point of eternity?”

This passage not only gave me language to a collective experience but it also felt intimately personal at the same time. It spoke to something I’ve been thinking a lot about: our insistence to edit while we live. I’m not speaking here of Marie Kondo’s declutter approach to things, which I firmly believe is very helpful and necessary. After all, who needs 50 tupperwares and 10 different pens in an overfilled drawer that is barely open? I’m speaking about theediting that comes from self watching and self criticism, something we develop internally very early on to create a contour, an edge to our living experience. It’s as if we create a built-in exterior gaze to match how we grew up: being monitored, watched and for most of us, criticized. There’s a difference between being aware and editing.

The other day I heard the writer Lauren Groff say: The body is thething that writes, the brain is thething that edits. Decluttering themind is a term used fairly often which I feel a bit allergic to. First, because of good luck and second because in order to declutter the mind we need to know where we stand in theopenness and space within us. It seems straightforward and simple but it isn’t, it can actually feel threatening to a lot of people. If we take this exterior gaze over us: Who are we? Do we get too vast, too open, too spacious? Do we edit to actually soothe ourselves from our own fears, worries, anticipations, to give ourselves an edge? If we think about it, this idea of standing back or being in the first draft is very compassionate and forgiving. It allows mistakes, detours, change of heart, pauses, mess, incompletion. Perhaps most of our confusion comes from living in this first draft and thinking where we are creating the final masterpiece. My daughter calls it “her fancy pen” when she writes down with a pencil and then uses the black pen to cover it, permanently. But what does that do to us? We can spend most of our lives living in the eyes of others (theother here can also be this part of us who is limiting, judging, editing) when we are still writing the draft, when we are learning we are not thefirst or the second draft or even themasterpiece. We are the in between. We are in construction. The question is: can we allow ourselves to it? Can we afford to stand back?

With love,
Mari

Ps: To read past letters, visit here