the space to be imperfect

In meditation, we're taught to sit with the uncomfortable energy of silence and stillness. Our habits and thoughts and behaviours are made clear, our cravings made visible, because there's nothing left to distract us. Without our habitual ways of relating to the world, we become fidgety, edgy. Yet in this unguarded space, it's possible to experience openness, to recognize the interconnectedness and complexity of all things. It becomes more difficult to view the world in simple binaries.

Wrestling with the uncomfortable in meditation provides a way to see the world from a fresh perspective, to acknowledge the limitations of our own view. As a writer, this is liberating. It's helped me to become 'unstuck' from patterned and lazy thinking. But it's also risky. We allow ourselves to be vulnerable. We acknowledge that we might not know what comes next. We risk falling onto our faces, to be misunderstood or unintentionally cause offence. Yet in order to move beyond the people-pleasing aspects of ourselves, in order to create work that is meaningful to our own growth as artists and as humans, it is necessary to take these steps.

This has been the path of artists throughout time. We seek to create and express the world anew. To create with honesty, we need to experience the world and grapple with our own place in it with as much clarity and compassion as we can muster. This compassion and clarity can take many forms and will look different for each one of us. The language and shape and form of our creations are as unique as our fingerprints. But I believe that all good writing contains this seed of compassion.

In turn, I believe we must extend this compassion to other writers, other creators - to all humans. To allow one another the space to make mistakes, to be imperfect and complicated creatures. When we shrink the space for others to be imperfect, we shrink that space for ourselves. We set ourselves up for failure or cling to the false idea that some of us our morally superior, worthier than others.

It's a complicated dance, in a complicated world.

- Trevor Corkum, from his "Notes on Writing" essay for Event Magazine (Spring/Summer 2017), as collected in 50 Years of Event Magazine: Collected Notes on Writing.