When Pens Around the World writes about the Writing Life we, as would naturally be assumed, lean towards the ‘writing’ part of the title. But today, I want to talk about the ‘life’ part. Since recently having a close call ending mine with a dodgy ticker, which has since been made less dodgy with successful heart surgery, I have been reflecting on the relationship between writing and life itself.
Now, I won’t go as far to say if I died how bad that would be for my writing. It would come to quite an abrupt end I can imagine. And the day I stop writing would be a bad day for me, at least. But during this tumultuous period of testy health, I managed to lose 25% of vision in my left eye. I won’t get that back. Then I got to thinking about one of my fears I’ve had throughout my life – going blind. Now this one is a stinker.
Now this is a life I don’t think I could handle. Writing is everything to me. Whether I’m writing to try and get published (the eternal slog), writing for therapy, writing for fun, writing because my wife is due a little love note, whatever the thing is, I need my eyes. Would I rather be dead? I don’t know. But my answer isn’t immediately “of course not!”. I truly value my eyesight that much in the context of being able to seeing the letter “a” as clear as day.
Life isn’t writing, I know that. But if what you love the most in the whole wide world was taken away from you, could you go on? Your ability to eat? Your ability to step outside? Your wife? Your children?
So, now that I’ve been thinking about this more lately, I am sure to remind myself of gratitude, that I can see, that I can write, and that there are many things that I can do that I am sad to know that others cannot. I’m lucky where others are not. I’m lucky that we live in an age of technology where my heart can be fixed. Not so many years ago the surgery I had would not have been available to me. Today, I was fixed in two hours. Crazy. And here I am, writing about it. And I’m very grateful for it.
It’s a good life.
Oh my goodness – what wise words, Michael. I shall be pondering your post for some time to come.
Thank you for such a powerful and thought-provoking piece, Michael.
I have had a couple of close calls on life, and each time re-entered the fray with renewed vigour. But also with more acceptance that life and health is not a given. Good health should be appreciated rather than poor health railed at. In an ideal world, of course, but good health tends to be the preserve of the young, who do not have that depth of appreciation of it.
I share your fear of blindness, Michael. What I felt I needed my vision for most was seeing mountains (as I type, I can see high peaks all around), which have some draw of great strength. I was a road cyclist of the cols, to quite a serious level, and I regarded this sport as being essential to my life and happiness.
I lost that with a back injury. I can now only look at the peaks, I can’t get in among them, I cannot feel that challenge which was so important of me and my bike against the essential elements.
And strangely enough, it wasn’t the bitter blow I would have imagined. Life needed some re-arranging, to be sure. The carbon fibre bike was swapped for a chunky electric which gets me several kilometers of range. The motorhome means I’m not at the mercy of hotel beds, and lets me get close to the mountains. But the most important change of all was to take up writing, as my new passionate interest in life.
I hardly dare say the words, but if I lost my sight, I like to think the skills i have earned in creating stories and worlds would survive, grace of some technology or another, and life-saving writing could continue.