on splitting the atom

don't be scared and don't hesitate; your calling awaits

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you know the world is in an uproar

I read somewhere that your art should scare you, that whatever you manage to dredge up from the depths of your soul should frighten and unsettle you.

Well, on that score, I’m feeling pretty good right now—because last week’s unspooling scared the absolute hell out of me! It was, by far, the most open and vulnerable piece of writing I have yet to produce. (I don’t know whether to thank you or apologise, dear reader.)

And let me tell ya: I was completely unprepared for the shocking toll it took on me. The day after I hit “publish,” I languished in the midst of what felt uncannily akin to a hangover. My head pounded, my appetite was nonexistent, I could barely get off the couch, I craved the sweet release of death, and my blood itched— okay, I might be exaggerating a bit—but the point remains, I had learned a valuable lesson: giving ain’t free.

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As a rule, we humans tend to avoid pain and discomfort (at least, on our saner days, we do). Actually—that’s giving us too much credit. Most of the time, all we’re doing is avoiding whatever we think will cause pain and discomfort.

In the past, the prospect of being open and vulnerable seemed to me very much like a danger to be avoided.

No wonder my writing languished before unspooling.

I wasn’t interested in offering the reader anything of substance. I wasn’t motivated by a desire to share or connect. Quite the opposite, in fact; it was I who desperately wanted something from the reader. I “gave,” in that sense, only to receive.

My writing contained much fear, anxiety, and striving. It lacked joy. It neglected openness and vulnerability.

I wrote, not as an act of giving, but as an act of desire.

(For those keeping score at home: this is not how to answer your calling, folks!)

“At least my desires aren’t vainglorious,” I assured myself in consolation for being a miserable, selfish bastard.

As I saw it, it was exactly because I didn’t fantasize about talk-show appearances, industry accolades, or a glowing blurb in the New York Review of Books—although those things might have been nice—that I deserved recognition and compensation. All I wanted was to subsist on the merit of my art—was that really too much to ask?

But, see, the thing is… I had no idea how to even make art. I had yet to learn that art is an offering, that art takes the beautiful, the poignant, the truthful, and the miserable and renders them transcendent. Art is communion. Art is the natural, universally intelligble language of the divine. It can illumine even the most mundane subject matter in such splendid ways as to change our lives forever.

Art encourages us to embrace life in spite of the horrible absurdity of the world. And that’s why we value artists; because they can brighten and guide and heal and encourage.

And yet, I didn’t deign to give my readers a goddamned thing.

So, like I said, it’s no wonder I received nothing in return. I got out what I put in: bupkis.

And the raw truth of the matter is that I was simply too scared to give.

I was so scared of rejection and failure that I guaranteed both. I was scared to open up about my pain for fear of being hurt—again or anew, it didn’t matter; I just didn’t want to hurt anymore.

And so I contracted.

Ironically, I was a writer who wanted to deny and suppress my own story. I was a writer dedicated to pursuing truth, who couldn’t bear to face his own.

(In fairness to Past Cody, I have no idea if he even possessed the capacity to comprehend any of this... Sometimes I think life is content to wait for us to sort our shit out ourselves before it steps in to provide much-needed guidance.)

Even as I write these words, I wonder; what did I think was going to happen if I opened up… ?

That the world would end?

That my head would explode?

I have no idea.

What I do know, however, is that I fell into old habits; I walled up my negative feelings and emotions and hastily constructed a façade to conceal them, hoping desperately that no one would spot the cracks in the foundation.

You are going to have to give and give and give, or there’s no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward. There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver.

- Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

the danger zone is everywhere

“… no self-propagating chain of nuclear reactions is likely to be started…”¹

During the initial phase of the Manhattan Project, some of the physicists began to grow concerned over the possible repercussions of their work. They went so far as to openly question the wisdom of proceeding to the experimental phase of development.

They weren’t concerned about the proliferation and devastation of nuclear weapons, mind you, but, rather, the risk of potentially igniting the very atmosphere itself, causing the Earth to become a dull, lifeless husk.

(I don’t think that’s what anybody means when they say that they want to get fried on a Saturday night.)

Yes, that happened; for real, for real—Nolan didn’t make it up for the movie.

Thankfully, concerns about the atmosphere igniting were theoretically assuaged before the Project reached the testing phase. (The quote above is excerpted from a paper issued by the Project members who grappled with the problem.) But still… calculations are only calculations. What if the math was wrong? What if The Bomb proved the undoing of humankind?

Imagine the fear and anxiety… imagine what it must have felt like….

Imagine waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, not knowing whether you were harnassing the power of the atom or creating a shortcut to Armageddon.

No wonder Oppenheimer, Fermi, and the Gang so morbidly placed bets on whether the Trinity Test would cause the destruction of the world. They clearly relied on increasingly creative ways to manage the stress of their enterprise.

Imagine the fear…

Imagine the anxiety…

Imagine the panic…

Imagine… imagine the pain that might be.

In many ways, that’s the worst pain of all.

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Photo by Ilja Nedilko on Unsplash

Well, dear reader, I’m here to say: I’ve split the atom—I opened up and was vulnerable. And like Oppenheimer et al., I’m still here to tell the tale. The world didn’t end.

Huh… now would you look at that.

And better yet, my breakthrough seems to have come with virtually no downsides. (Sure, I lost a few subscribers who probably felt I was oversharing but, let’s be honest, they were never gonna ride with unspooling, anyway.)

For what it’s worth, I hope you find that encouraging, as you pursue your own calling. Or even just as you continue to grapple with life.

Because I’m awakening to the myriad ways in which my life and calling are intimately intertwined. The depth of the connection is truly staggering. It’s more profound, edifying, and illuminating than I ever could have imagined.

In both arenas, I must give as much and as freely and as meaningfully as I can to grow and flourish. In both arenas, I am best served by “opening up,” rather than contracting. In both arenas, I cannot hope to “fake it ‘til I make it.”

It appears that making progress in one arena, then, is to make progress in both.

So, at least there’s that… at least there’s that.

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Naturally, I’ve tackled today’s unspooling through the lens of writing—because that’s how all this manifests in my life—but I feel strongly that everything I’ve said applies to anything you might refer to as “a calling.” So whatever that thing is for you, that’s what I’m speaking to.

As the mystical Sufi poet Rumi put it:

There is one thing in the world that you must never forget. You may forget everything else except that one thing, without any cause for worry. However if you remember and take care of everything else but forget that one thing, you will have accomplished nothing. It is as though a king were to send you to a village on a specific mission. You go and perform a hundred other tasks, but if you neglect to take care of the task for which you were sent, it is as though you did absolutely nothing. The human being has come into this world for a particular purpose. If he does not accomplish that purpose, he will have done nothing at all.

Excerpt from The Rumi Daybook: 365 Poems and Teachings from the Beloved Sufi Master translated by Kabir and Camille Helminski, 24.

And if you find yourself somewhat allergic to the very concept of “callings,” know that you’re not alone. For a long time, I dismissed the idea out of hand simply because it seemed to imply that one need also buy into concepts like “reason” and “purpose,” of which I could find no conclusive evidence. But the good news is—at least as far as I can tell—whether your calling serves a higher “purpose” or is yours for a “reason,” is beside the point.

All that matters is that you answer the call.

Be well and stay on the path, my friends,

- c.d.

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1. https://permalink.lanl.gov/object/tr?what=info:lanl-repo/lareport/LA-00602.