Big Ed's PlaceA partner that can help you go further
My wife and I recently celebrated our fifth anniversary. It’s definitely been a “whoa–where has the time gone?” phenomena for us–the days seem to have flown by. But it did give us a change to look back at our seven year relationship.
The thing that I wanted to write about here, though, was a comment that was made to me when I was considering proposing, that’s affected my writing. A good friend told me, “Pick a partner that helps you go further than you can on your own.” It’s turned out to be incredibly good advice
Now by “further” he meant “makes life richer and deeper” as well as “helps you go where you want to go.” Richer and deeper are difficult terms to define, but most people have a sense of them, particularly spiritual seekers. There are times, when one is truly living in the moment and truly present, that the words takes on a hue and a sense that is more than it does in those moments when we’re wrapped up in our heads and our ego-selves.
It’s a sense of awe simply at living.
And I’m blessed to get that with my wife.
Of course, that doesn’t prevent the other definition of “helps you go where you want to go” from being operative as well. The tricky part is, of course, knowing where you want to go. What may be today’s objective and pined-for goal may be discarded five years from now. That said, there are exceptions, like the desire to have children. But my personal experience is that those exceptions are few in number and generally obvious.
But I’ve found that that doesn’t necessarily matter. A partner who helps you and supports you no matter what direction you are going is a blessing. Many people say that about our kids–”I want them to be happy, no matter what they choose to do.” How many of us say that about our romantic partners?
In my case, my wife’s support has been instrumental in me getting so seriously into writing (were you wondering when I was going to bring it around to writing?). For a while, she was my editor, but it hasn’t been her active support that’s been important. It’s really the emotional support and the trust. She provides a solid base from which I can explore.
And I think that’s critical for writers of many stripes. We need people who believe in us. We may not be in a place where we have patrons who support us, like days of old. But I think most authors have hit a point where they’ve thought, “what the heck am I doing?” Those moments are much easier to get through if we know that someone, somewhere, has our back.
We go further then, in what we can get done. With the right partner, we also go deeper, which can manifest in our writing. At least for me, it’s made a huge difference to be married to such a woman.