Creative Satiation
I can still see my parents the night after I came home from my first date. They were settled in bed, watching TV in the dim blue light of the screen. I was aglow, heady with adventure and emotion, ready to take to outer space or pen the next great novel or something else of the sort.
“How did it go?” My mom asked.
“It was great!” I responded. “We had dinner, walked around the bookstore, and sat talking outside, under an awning while it poured rain.”
They smiled at the look on my face, the tone of my voice. My mom fondly said, half to me and half to my father beside her in the bed, “I remember those days—the feeling of a first date.”
In that moment, a nostalgic sobriety settled over me—a realization that this was my future. Quickly, I pushed back against the thought as I bid them goodnight, headed up the stairs to get ready for bed. I don’t ever want to lose this excitement—the magic of new experiences, new love. I don’t want to be fully satisfied with a night of TV in bed, in things becoming…mundane. Normal.
The notion made me shudder. Was growing up succumbing, bit by bit, to the loss of that magic? The suppression of emotion?
It is ten years later. I have had a daughter of my own. I have been married six years. I have lived in six more homes, three more cities, met dozens more friends, packed my life into boxes multiple times, and taken my antidepressants faithfully for a decade.
Do we lose the magic of youth as we grow older? Are we disenchanted, numbed to the new, emotionally stunted? Are we less ourselves as the stresses of the world wear away at our hearts? Do we settle into the mundane—do we settle?
I’ve encountered this same query in the realm of my creative pursuits. As I’ve released my decade-long enamored relationship with fanfiction (see this post for more background on my history with maladaptive daydreaming and fanfiction), I’ve experienced a similar waning of enthusiasm for writing. I’ve chipped away at original works of fiction, pushing towards submitting my first novel for publication…but the magic feels gone much of the time. The drive to create, to publish, to craft stories…hasn’t been there.
I admit it to myself reluctantly, as another weekend passes without any work being done on my science fiction novel. Do the fictional stars not burn as brightly? Will I ever feel that magic again?
Most of my evenings are spent in front of a screen, watching shows and movies or playing games with my husband; and I no longer want to be the super-special, renowned author I was certain I’d become as a 6th grader.
This morning, the Lord brought to my mind this verse I’d recently listened to in John 6:35: “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.’”
I lay awake in the early morning, staring at the ceiling, surrounded by another round of boxes, and felt the Spirit settle my own with this assurance:
You are not numb. You are satiated. You are content. You are stable.
As a flighty, emotional teenager, I chased affirmation and adventure through stories, through people. Now that I’m learning to take my 2,000 spiritual calories from the Lord, the desperate pursuit of adventure doesn’t look the same. It isn’t extending forever before me, shouting, insisting it be listened to…
It is quiet, like a lamb in pasture who knows it shall not want. It is awake but calm. It finds beauty in real-life creative pursuits: in everything from tinkering on a novel for fun instead of escape to coordinating a color-coded running outfit. From tending to her daughter’s little soul to staying steady during a huge life upheaval, such as a move.
We are not jaded. We are not less than we used to be. Our brains are fully formed now; and yes, life is more familiar and less magical sometimes. We have TV nights more often than we used to, perhaps. We stay in and revel in comfort, normalcy, mundane living.
But that doesn’t mean we have changed fundamentally.
Perhaps, instead, we are more creatively satiated.
