Let's Say Your House Has Burnt Down

Disclaimer : Rizi

It is a report generated by your senses percepting the world. It is a factual observation of reality—undeniable. However, if you would then imply "My house has burnt down and I have therefore suffered greatly," you are overlaying that observation with a perception and interpretation constructed by your mind. Your house burning down is real, while your suffering is made real by your interpretation. Understanding that, it is important to be aware that these interpretations come from our mind, and are thus within our boundary of control. Simply put, we always have the choice to reject interpreting it like so, sufficiently making that interpretation not real, and non-existent.

So explained Gregory Hays when he wrote the introduction to Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. If this sounds familiar, a much simpler analogy would be whether you think the glass is half-empty, or half-full. Obviously, the implication that you shouldn't feel terrible when your house has burnt down takes a significant amount of practice under this philosophy. Furthermore, it is worth noting that stoicism is primarily a philosophy about resisting pain, and little else, for better or worse. Indeed, Marcus' written notes tell many ways to master pain, yet almost none tell how to find happiness in life.

One has to wonder if Marcus seeks to antagonise emotions, both good and bad. Does he constantly reject them? Or has he practiced this way of thinking for so long that there was nothing to reject? Whatever the case, Stoicism is a great fit for him and his role as an emperor and a diplomat. Though, as a writer—living and dying by internalising emotions—the very thought of rejecting emotions dreads me so. Hays makes a lot of sense however: emotions are actually within our control through how we view events that happen in our lives. And when I see it that way, I get his vision; it is unwise to let our emotions harm ourselves.

 

And when the biggest source of negative emotions is mispositioned expectations, expecting nothing out of everything we do does elimintate emotions that are harmful to us and other people. But doesn't that contradict stoicism as a philosophy not about happiness? Having no expectations means you are happier overall most of the times. While that may be true, maybe it instead has something to do with the fact that you deprive yourself of the concept of wanting something that you don't get mad over failure, yet also don't get the satisfaction of success. How then, should a balance be struck?

With that in mind, picture this scenario for a bit; let's say... the current state of the creative industry makes it difficult for new writers to gain momentum.

Hereafter referred as observation, what sort of interpretation would you impose into that observation? Is it one of lamentation; writers have truly lost, with their homes raided and replaced by robots? It may be one of inner peace, that writers simply need to find another way to get satisfaction from their works. You have your own interpretation of it, be it beneficial or harmful. But me personally, the second interpretation I mentioned above was mine own. In this opportunity, I'd like to share a bit of my writing philosophy, as well as a glimpse of my writing process.

I said philosophy, but I don't exactly have anything elaborate to lecture you and take away your precious time. The point is, I view writing as a very personal aspect of my self. I use writing to internalise, and therefore accept, the emotions I feel throughout different points in my life. I always tell this story of me trying to get my parent to stop smoking whenever I talk about my writing process. I was the bad kid back in high school, so when I asked them to stop smoking, they said they would if I get good scores during my first semester in college. I ended up getting straight As on all subjects, and, well, they didn't stop smoking.

 

They claimed to have never said anything close to that, and then said that they would stop smoking when I become a... "good kid". It was an infuriating revelation to me, because I knew that target relied on subjective interpretations, and nothing I was doing was considered "good enough" for them. It was something that I had trouble reconciling myself with—the idea that, try as I might, I would never succeed. I then decided to write it down and turn it into a story. For this, the story is about a time-looping girl who foresaw her friend's death. She looped the month over and over again, trying to find a way to save her, but death came in countless different forms. Eventually, the girl gave up, yet in doing so, she found solace knowing that it's "all over".

Writing this character in this particular way benefits both the story and me. The story has a good anchor point to a certain real feeling that comes from real-life experiences, and by writing it, I'm able to see my emotions manifested as a character, and therefore reconcile and make peace with it. This is how close writing is to me. It has developed in a way that I may never have to go to see a psychologist funnily enough.

Looping back to stoicism, this is how I've come to form my interpretation over the aforementioned observation. Writing is first and foremost a place for me to release my feelings and get to know myself. Is that stoicism? Well, no. Not really. If stoicism is the rejection of emotions, then what I'm doing is the opposite of it—an embracing of emotions. So I baited you in the title, then? Well, not really as well. There might be no stoicism in my writing philosophy, but there is in how I view the crisis of the aforementioned, 100% purely hypothetical observation. One of the best simplifications of stoicism is a well-known passage if you frequent this school of philosophy: "Why fret over things that are within your control? After all, you can change it. And why fret over things that are outside your control? After all, you cannot change it."

If the current state of the creative industry makes it difficult—heck, impossible—for new writers to gain readers and momentum to spread their works to a wider audience, then it is simply how things are. Marcus oft remarks how we are strongly encouraged to live in harmony with nature. Rebelling against it is analogous to a body with severed limbs. Of course, if nature deems it that creative platforms all implode themselves with egregious monetisation and that-one-buzzword-regarding-non-human-writing, then nature sucks and it can go fuck itself.

Which is all the more important for us to self-maintain our morale. Regrettably, the observation has caused many up-and-coming writers to be discouraged, and even quit writing altogether. While I'm inclined to just dismiss it as "natural selection", the point of this post is basically to find a way around it. So, how exactly? Stoicism, brother! All my life, I've tangled my writing in a dance with my emotions—an aspect that I have full control of. Things like popularity, reader count, competition, the devil itself—fickle luck; these things are beyond our control. Attempting to control the uncontrollable by placing expectations that it will behave in a certain way is an easy road to despair.

I'm only half a stoic. If writing really is dead, then it's just sad. I might not publish my writing much, but contrasting that, I have this unquenchable thirst for critiques and feedbacks, and would love people to read my works for the sake of getting them and improving my craft. The loop of improvement is addictive. But even that, I've come prepared by being able to and am used to self-analysing my works. So, all this time, this post is just a propaganda telling y'all that my way of expecting nothing is the best way because it's based on millennia of philosophy study while you just suffer for nothing? Yes, yes to both. Get fucked, attention-seeking monkeys.

Jokes aside, I feel for the, uhh... observation. If you are an artist, and should you despair at the observation, I'll leave you a passage from Marcus:

"Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what's in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centred, irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? ... Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions. But make sure you guard against the other kind of confusion. People who labour all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse towards are wasting their time—even when hard at work." (Meditations 1.5, 1.7)

Writers, should you be on the verge of quitting this beautiful discipline of art, I urge you to ask yourself; what is writing to you? Is it simply a tool for fame that you abandon because of the observation, or is it something more than that? Is there something you want to tell to the world, no matter what? Do you feel the thrill of writing what hasn't been written yet no matter how oversaturated the genres and tropes are, because no one can write what you are able to write? Do you perhaps use your works to introspect yourself and connect closer with who you are at the deepest depths of your soul?

Beyond all the struggles and amidst this chaotic nature of the observation doing everything in its power to pressure you to quit, do you feel the desire to sit and write simply because... you like writing? If you answer no, then know there's no shame in trying another path in life in the name of finding happiness. In fact, take pride that you once wrote.

If you answer yes, then may this post remind you not to lose sight of what's truly important—far more important than fame or read counts or getting published—your irreplacable pride. Let yourself focus on that, and that only; lose those distractions.

Let it be your newfound source of happiness.


(Below are my afterthoughts on a story I uploaded here. Skip it or read it, up to you)

If you've checked the stories section of this place, you might know me as the guy who wrote the plane yuri. It's a spur-of-the-moment thing for me, and I even forgot how the idea first came to be. If you'd indulge me in a bit of a tangent, I think a certain conversation triggered my memory of reading Maitetsu. I wasn't able to finish it, but there was this CG of Hachiroku seeing the world from above when she flew on a propeller plane. Coupled with my interest in aviation through the Ace Combat game series, there was this weird tingling within me telling that I might be able to come up with a short story about aviation.

The first result from my brainstorming process was the main character, Hotaru. Her tone reference is Hoshino Ichika from Project Sekai. Then came Hotaru's best friend, which didn't make it into the actual work funnily enough. It's Hanamura Yuzuru, or Hanamura-san as Hotaru calls her. Apparently in the tone reference section I wrote "Susie - Deltarune". And last but not least, the angel Shiro. Her name was originally Inori but it got swapped for an unknown reason. Her tone reference is Maelle from Expedition 33 and Shinosawa Hiro from Gakuen Idolmaster.

At first, I was just writing and imagining how Hotaru and Shiro would interact. It's a very "flow state" process with not a lot of notes and plans. It turned out to be a story about finding a place in the world, which was quite interesting that it became about that. I had a hard time writing their conversations because both are very very not talkative. I wrote on my notes that Hotaru would be kind of forced to be more active because of Shiro's like, all confused about Earth, but when it clicked to me, they really felt amazing to write, especially nearing the end.