Writing well and reading well mean paying attention
to all the subtleties embodied in a sentence
In its exact form and no other.*
Verlyn Klinkenborg

Notice everything about your life.

Say it all to yourself and hear everything..

The pain as well as the joy,
The trauma as well as the triumphs:

Trauma in a variety of forms, is part of each of our lives. It includes any negative experience or incident that shapes who you are and how you operate in the world**

We may believe that to live our desirable life
there must be no shadow, no darkness.
Stephen Gilligan and Robert Dilts suggest that we not only carry a gift within us,
But also a woundedness.^

We are not only our gift,
We are not only our woundedness:

Works of art are born from the conflict of life. … Life is about the ultimate questions of finding love and self-worth, or bringing serenity to inner chaos, of the titanic social inequities everywhere around us, of time running out.^^

So we pay attention to all these subtleties
embodied in our lives,
Somehow creating from this unlikely mix
our lives-in-all-their-fullness.

*From Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several Short Sentences About Writing;
**From Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent;
^From Stephen Gilligan and Robert Dilts’ The Hero’s Journey;
^^From Robert McKee‘s newsletter: The World According to Writers.