I didn’t write much in 2020. Like many, the year seemed to knock me off balance. Struggling to find my footing, much of my barrier was rooted in tone. Writing depends greatly on feeling – both of the author and the reader. Without this, words can seem pedestrian at best and harmful at worst. In a period of great uncertainty, pain, and division, it is difficult to navigate the best tone to approach it. While I strive for honesty in writing, knowing that someone somewhere is sure to connect, I am guarded with tones of anger, which is what I felt most of the last year.
This is not to say I am seething with unrelenting rage. Quite the contrary. Yet, many times when I would come to write, this feeling would seep out. There are few emotions that ruin writing quicker than anger. It unleashes the worst of us if we are not careful. This is not to say anger has no place in writing or in life. In a time filled with such broken systems (political, economic, racial, etc. ), it is expected to feel such things. However, its insidiousness quickly becomes about more than the subject at hand. Anger makes everyone a target and in writing, this often comes across with bitterness.
Part of my mental health challenge is paranoia. Left unchecked and unprocessed, even the best of people can be viewed as an enemy. As a writer, it is my cosmic duty to understand this to the best of my ability, in the hopes of not letting it control how I craft words together. This is not self-censoring, but something more. The world is owed the most authentic version of ourselves, but it must be given completely and when able, to be touched with hope. Even in the gravest of writings, the reader can be lifted up to something higher. I take this seriously. With the heartbreaking tone of 2020, I needed to process and find a little bit of hope to grab onto.
Towards the end of the year, I was able to do a series of intensive counseling. There have been moments of my life where I needed to return to center, and having a therapist helps me return to the warmth. The one phrase that kept repeating was “it is all connected”. All of the anger I felt in 2020, was/is connected to everything that has happened in my life. The sum of our existence is found in each moment of living. The pain I felt in this past season was anchored in so much more than a few months.
It was a culmination of
job loss and loss of faith
past and present trauma
relational hurts and a wounded identity
This is always about that. We can never fully extricate ourselves from the past we lived. Each day puts a mark on us. Much of this is good, for it crafts us into something greater. Yet, it is only through time that we are able to process it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the message of Jesus recently. I try to boil the message found in His teaching and being to something clear. Stripping back the hundreds of sermons, podcasts, songs, and feelings that can too often cloud our thinking, I look for purity. His anger was present (and always aimed at the religious) but I am given hope by His incredible capacity to love. This love was not contrary to His anger, but a direct result of it. It seemed like with every interaction, the things of this world moved from foreground to background with a mere word from Him. His message is rooted in a radical tenderness that we cannot fully describe or sermonize. I feel my own moral inconsistencies and mental health challenges being swallowed by a wave of calming grace.
There might be healing found in the new sun.
May your anger be righteous and your hope be plenty
Matt simon blog 