Tanka

Apprehension Without Sleep

Sleep will cure me of negative thoughts

wild uncertainty

craving for appreciation

follow your dreams

you are just fine as you are

with mild anticipation

The above tanka captures my feeling on this subject perfectly. It’s a response to a prompt by Sujona Chatterjee, “We are not our thoughts” in Know Thyself, Heal Thyself. Thanks, Sujona! Great prompt. You have managed to get both the best and the worst out of me.

Sometimes writing comes easy. Even my poetry comes easy. At times, though, I am not happy about the result. The wording, the structure, the emotions I want to convey. As a result, I feel uncertain about my skills and as such, I start to wonder how other people will respond to such a sub-par quality spawn of my writer’s womb.

It can be paralyzing. Instead of working on improving, I work on fixing. On fixing things that I think other people want to see fixed. Then, I can’t quite reach the point where I think it is good enough to publish. I actually started a publication just because of this. Without it, I was probably still struggling to publish my work. My thoughts take over: if I think I am not good enough, then I probably am not good enough.

Usually, I am able to counter my thoughts. I know that my feeling of being inferior is a product of my own imagination. I’ve written about it earlier, in a haiku:

What I neglected to mention, however, is that I find it rather easy to quell my inhibiting emotions. I know I am happy with my results. I value my work. I know I matter. For me, all it takes to get out of a downward spiral is a good night’s sleep. That easy. If I am rested, it’s easy to push away all negativity and go with my feeling.

Spyder really struck a chord with his comment on the above article:

It is ok to validate people, it is ok to feel good when you yourself are validated, the problem comes when we are frozen without it. Doing without it being needed frees us.

If you are frozen without validation, you have a problem. But there’s freedom to be found if you don’t need it.

I was struggling with the tanka. Are the words appreciation and anticipation too far apart? Maybe I should swap some sentences to make the rhyme jump out more? Will people get that if you follow your heart, that you will only experience anticipation? And it’s of a good kind: just mild. Happy apprehension makes our life worthwhile. Will they get that? Are they able so see through the words and look into my apprehension?

People that have read my poetry before know that I like to explain my work. But as I was writing, editing and rewriting the tanka in this article, it had never occurred to me that I could do whatever I wanted in my poem and, if I was feeling uncertain, I could explain it later. It goes without saytin that I did not sleep well last night.

Sometimes, I am glad I am my thoughts. That’s when it comes to my beliefs, my morals, my values. They make me who I am.

On the other hand, sometimes I am happy to transcend my negativity by pushing my thoughts aside. They don’t matter anyway. Getting enough sleep does. Without it, I risk becoming my thoughts.

As I was about to publish this story, I did change the‘dreams’ from ‘heart’. I sincerely hope you appreciate that. Let me know in the comments!