Zest and Gusto. How rarely one hears these words used. How rarely do we see people living - or for that matter creating - by them. Ray Bradbury
I’ve read Bradbury’s treatise on writing before, when I was younger and hungry for a rule book. Something that would teach me how to be the kind of human/artist/writer/woman that I hoped I could be if I promised to follow the proposed lesson plan right down to the letter. No such book. No such luck. What a scam. I learned to write stories by reading them instead (what a concept!) and eventually found a way into the dim rooms of my very own intuition. Had the key all along, didn’t know it. Still learning the layout and where all of the light switches are but it’s a a helluva lot brighter in here than before.
Zen In The Art Of Writing waved at me from the library shelf last month, like it was begging to be borrowed. That place was locked up for over a year and I want to take every book home for at least a long weekend and give all of those pages some air. I reread this one fast, in only two sittings, and memorized this line right away. ZEST & GUSTO, he went on to explain, are the only two things he would ever suggest that his students should have. If you don’t love it - don’t do it. There’s a whole world out there filled with all kinds of interesting work. Why waste your scanty seconds on something that you don’t enjoy? Luckily, this theory works well for me because I do happen to love most of the things that I get to do when it comes to my work even though that truth is so hard to see on some days and can sometimes seem way too heavy to hold on my own.
But as you’ll see up above, it’s not only writing that he is referring to. We can apply these enthusiams to everything. Now listen here, I’m not saying that I always do - I basically eat the exact same dinner every night and spend my most adventurous days exploring the 22 block radius that I so courageously call home - just that we can. It’s an option. We can step up to every table with our appetite intact and take it all in. We can relish in the way that things actually are - good, bad or ugly. We can show up for our shifts and our kids and our overwhelming to-do lists and stories with ZEST. We can give it ALL some more god damn GUSTO. What good news.
Until next time: tell the truth, take no shit and listen hard enough to laugh a little (even at yourself).
Here we go,
Anne