What I Love – Lisa Holcomb

We’ve been talking about Personal Creeds in church lately, so I thought I’d share my own personal creed:

I believe that love can conquer hate, that kindness can break barriers and that we should try to leave the world better than we found it.

I believe that we should respect our fellow human beings, regardless of their race, gender identity, or sexual orientation, and that we should reach out to help the poor and the powerless.

I believe in the power and the magic of the written word, the satisfaction that comes from hard work, and the comfort we derive from our family and friends.

I believe that pain is always going to find us in some form or fashion and that how we react to that pain determines our path in life. I choose not to wallow in it, to always try my hardest to accomplish what I say I am going to do, and to not just find the light in darkness, but persistently stumble towards it.

Every person owns a beautiful story; I learn best by listening, not judging. By learning about another, I learn about myself. I strive every moment of my life to make myself better to the best of my ability, to share all that I learn in that process that all may profit by it, to take what comes with a smile and without loss of courage, to be considerate of people and things in everything I say and do, to appreciate beauty everywhere I look, and to find the best in others.

I get emails all the time from various writers trying to sell their latest books about writing, writing courses, etc. Sometimes they are full of interesting things, sometimes not so much. Today’s message from bookfox.co caught my eye sent me down this rabbit hole:

Write down your favorite album, your favorite movie, and your favorite artwork.
Now answer a few questions about these selections:
What do your answers have in common?
What kind of art are they?Why do these pieces of art, above all else, move you?
Now to figure out what this means. What do your answers tell you about the type of writing you should produce?

My answers:

Favorite album: Nomads, Indians, and Saints by the Indigo Girls

Favorite movie: Sliding Doors

Favorite artwork: Van Gogh’s Starry Night

What do these things have in common? I chose them all during my college years. They all represent a time to me when I was first starting out, making my first decisions away from my parents, living on my own for the first time. And even with twenty years in between those days and now, I still love them. I still think about them as some of the first things that were really, truly my things.

Other things they have in common is a certain amount of wildness and inconsistency, some questioning of reality, a journey to find what really is true about the world. Those are still things I’m thinking about today, even though some of my thoughts on those subjects have changed, my quest for truth in the world has not. I’m still striving for my own authenticity in a world that wants me to be just like everyone else. But not I can see how different everyone else really is and see what that means in their lives. My world has expanded so much since then.

The next part of the email made me realize that I’d gone off the intended path of the lesson at hand for the day, but that’s okay. I like the answers I found.