On Dreamshaping: The Empty-Handed Life

Hands aren’t only for holding and grasping—they’re also for teaching us what it’s like to surrender, palms up, empty-handed. The nothing we find there is often the something we need.

It’s hard to let go of our many identities. Getting up and writing has been ‘who I am’ for forty years or so. The fear we all have is that when something leaves our lives, whether it’s a job, or a creative activity, or a person, we won’t know who we are without it. This is acutely present with caregivers: taking care of someone becomes our identity, and when that person is gone, the loss is compounded by losing the sense of self it gave us: what am I going to do now? How will I spend my days or nights? What will define me?

I experience this with writing and the compulsion to create. When I don’t do either on any given morning, I feel as if something has been missed, or slipped away from me. And yet, I’ve written ten novels, countless short stories, articles, scripts, you name it. To not get up and write leaves me feeling as if my life is somehow ending, that I have no purpose other than as a man who constructs worlds with words. That cannot be the case! I may not write another book. I may not write another mystery or thriller. But I will always create, which is what I’m doing now. And I will always write. Putting words on empty pages is how I express my being, and there’s nothing wrong with allowing that to always be a focal point of my life. But I won’t allow it to determine my sense of value on this journey.

Maybe I’ll write another novel or short story, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll write another column, maybe I won’t. It’s the doing that matters. I will create. I will put something out into the multiverse, and I will do it almost every day. At the same time, taking breaks, and allowing ourselves to not do anything from time to time, is key to finding balance and calm.

Remember, nothing is missing. Whatever we do or do not do, no stroke has been left out of the paintings of our lives. The hand is full, the hand is empty. The hand grasps, the hand releases. What the hand holds, including nothing, is not the hand. We are the hand. Life is the hand.

We can live the empty-handed life, follow the empty-handed path, and be full.