Escape Your Loneliness
Follow your kindred spirit already
I wrote my first short story at age 9. Never published it. I started writing a political activism pamphlet at age 12. I didn’t get past the third page; although I made a pact with a friend that we would be revolutionaries (I doubt if he remembers). I am grateful that I lost all that juvenile juice which I was going to spend on political activism—I was simply searching for a worthy cause. Regrettably, I did not write anything apart from class notes after these writing stints.
Eight years later, on a boring day in October, in a quiet laboratory classroom, and with the luck of a good book, I started writing again. This time with virility, consistency, and gusto. This mix of elements—boredom, quiet classroom, and book—woke me up to the world in a different way like Neo waking up to the Matrix or whatever equivalent you can think of. I started writing again when I met that 221B Baker Street boy—Sherlock Holmes.
Holmes did not whisper to me to start writing consistently. Far from it. I chose that tool because it best served a goal. What I found in him instead was a model to be aspired to. Someone to be imitated. I found solace in him away from the stringent definitions of life and success that I lived in the world. Until then, my definition of life and success was striving for the scarce resources everyone else knew we were competing for. You know the drill: do school, get job, keep doing job, and do job harder; retire. Although I perceived that this may not be the only way, no other way seemed possible and I was lonely in my conceptions of what a variant definition of success would be. I was bored too. I knew that an alternative possibility existed but I was stiff in the convention to pursue it. I became lonely amidst the crowd of everyone running in the same direction. Luckily, I escaped that existential boredom cum loneliness when I found in that fictional character an expression I sensed existed but I could neither tell nor define.
Upon reading The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes, I saw a road less travelled of doing good for thrill’s sake. I then discovered the pleasures of doing things for their own sakes; for receiving your satisfaction from doing the thing itself rather than what extrinsic benefit it may yield. He solved murder cases because it was fun. That type of obsession is rare to find—you find most of it in fiction. But don’t worry, I don’t sniff dead bodies or beat corpses with whips to show signs of bruising. I sniff ideas and beat them with whips in hopes that they would bruise and reveal something. I don’t tailor elaborate disguises to hide in plain sight. I just write in plain sight. Why? Because it is fun. If I found anything in Holmes, it was not the desire to write. I had written prior to that. But they were lifeless. No driving power. I needed something to animate why I write and I found it: curiosity for the subject sake. That is what I found in aspiring towards the curious, thrill-seeking, ‘unhealthy’ obsession of Holmes with a case or a subject. I loved his obsession. I wanted it.
One way or another, we find ourselves aspiring towards something. Children at one time wanted to be doctors and astronauts. Now they want to be YouTubers or TikTok stars. Who can blame them? We extol people we wish to be like. We put them in obvious positions like the sun so that they may shed their light on whatever we do. Or so that we may do what we wish by the light and hope they provide. By this, we see the power of aspiration in moving people from one point to inertia. You can displace people from inertia by giving them a guiding light. You can tell them to step up higher using the same mechanism. But it just gets awry when we begin aspiring mindlessly like promiscuous wifi flirting with anything.
I went from writing in huffs and puffs like a dying engine to writing like a torrent because I chose the right model to aspire to. The keyword is “chose.”
Maybe you can change some of your habits with a careless aspiration. Maybe. But odds are that ill-fitted aspirations will leave you with results you don’t want. You should choose. And there are two reasons why you should make a deliberate effort.
First, any model that calls your attention amidst a sea of options says something about you that you do not yet recognise. Call me mystical or woo-woo. But in cases such as these, I believe in kindred spirits. I believe you belong to a lineage of ancestors who did art or craft similar to the way you desire. You are not alone in favouring a style above others. Haven’t you observed that some writers (insert your craft here) stand out to you more than others? Why do you love John Donne more than Margret Atwood? Find out. Fortunately, even if it were fantasy, finding kindred spirits cure you of an indescribable loneliness that comes from looking around you and realising that you live in Babel—everyone is talking but you cannot understand them and them you.
You probably love Holmes because he has hard facts—lots of them, a keen eye, and a deductive mind. I love him because he flogged a corpse with a stick. I wanted his obsessive curiosity and I got it. Now I have enough staying power to see cases to an end and suck the thrill out of them.
Before I tell you the second reason why you should choose a model to aspire to, I want you to think of a habit you wish to change or a trait that you want. Then scribble the names of people who have that trait you want. Then get to work. You have spent time reading all the techniques in your field. It is time to choose a model and aspire.
On the second reason: You don’t need it. Follow your kindred spirit already.
Fun fact: Our Mathematics teacher flogged us in class because someone asked him for “example 2.” He is not my kindred spirit.
A big thanks to Catalina Munoz, Leslie Myint, and Rachael Tiss for their feedback on the first draft which allowed me to think more clearly.
