“We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.”
― Ray Bradbury

 
I love this quote. So many aspects to it.

Allowing ourselves to be filled, connecting to that incoming flow. Quiet, it doesn’t shout to announce itself or pound on the door demanding to be let it. It waits, waits as long as it takes, waits for us to open to it and let it in. We need to trust that we have an endless supply of story. Our ideas will never desert us. Our imagination will always be there. Our creative selves are permanently part of us. Sometimes we keep the door locked, but it’s not our story that has failed, it’s our courage to be open to it.

Then, if we let ourselves be filled, we still aren’t done. Allowing ourselves to tip over takes real courage, a willingness to be off balance, to fall. A willingness to be spilled, to be broken in two, to let our hearts be broken. A willingness to feel, so deeply, to let our characters’ pain be our pain, to let their love and joys be our love and joys. It needs a sense of enough abundance , so that we can let go of what we hold within us. Knowing we can empty ourselves, trusting we will be filled again.  We don’t need to hold on to what we have like a miser.

Then allowing the beautiful stuff out. This is hard. Because it doesn’t look beautiful at first. It can look messy, dirty, unacceptable. We hold back on the beautiful, not wanting to let anyone see the ugliness we know we hide. The “not nice” emotions. The chaos. The grittiness. The mistakes. We’ll keep holding on, holding back. How can we let anyone see that part of us. How can we risk being rejected?

If we aren’t willing to be filled, we have nothing to give the world. If we aren’t willing to be broken, we can’t feel the emotional truth of our stories, and we can’t let them come out into the world. Unless we let them come out, no one will ever see the beauty we hide. The stories only we could tell will never be told. The world will be a smaller place.

Never think your story isn’t important enough to matter, that it’s too little, that it’s no loss. Your story is your story, and you have no way of knowing whose heart it could touch, or whose life it could change.



 Photo by lostintheredwoods