Living In Others’ Heads
By Casey Douglass
Writing requires the
ability to get inside the head of a character, to see their thought
processes and motivations unfolding, their synapses firing and their
senses collating. What can be useful in character creation is far
less useful in the real world, as it just boils down to guesswork.
I’m not saying empathy can’t be useful of course, but itself is
just using your own mind to try to understand another’s
feelings/situation, hopefully based on some decent facts.
It’s an easy trap to
fall into, thinking that we know what someone else is really thinking
or why they have done a particular thing. Sure, we can guess, but the
danger comes when we forget that we are guessing. How many times have
we not asked the cutie out because we fill our mind with thoughts of
“He/she isn’t interested” or “I bet they are in a
relationship” or others that flow from ear to ear in a
self-defeating loop of misery. At other times, we might think we know
what unknown individuals will think about our latest creative
endeavour: “Nobody will like it!” or “People just aren’t
interested in what I create!” being two of my own personal
favourites.
Viewing the world this
way seems to avoid a dose of pain or uncertainty. If you never ask
the person out or actually release your creation to the world, you
avoid a whole host of possible unpleasantness: rejection,
embarrassment, criticism and other uncomfortable states. It makes the
world seem safer and more predictable, and also seems to give you the
illusion of control, even though in actual fact you are losing some.
How so? By letting your
fear of others’ opinions dictate what you do, you are handing over
any control you might have to an external factor. If these thoughts
stop you doing something that, when first thought of, delighted you,
you have quenched your candle of inspiration with the gloopy mud of
despair. Can you hear it sizzle? Before long, it might not kindle
itself at all, I mean, why bother!
I think all we can do
in this situation is to try to bring a measure of mindfulness to how
we perceive others. If you at least know that you are stacking things
against yourself in this manner, you are better placed to account for
those feelings and thoughts without being blindly swept along by
them. You might not be able to adjust your course straight away but
repeated awareness will eventually help you see how predictable your
own mind can be. Once it loses the power to effortlessly drag you
down, you gain some of that power yourself.
I have struggled with
this mindset for many many years and I can only imagine how things
might be now if I was less in awe of my doubts and more “Let’s
have a go!” in my actions. I try to push the envelope when I can,
doing things that I feel are risky creatively or are outside my
comfort zone socially, and just try to see the world for what it is:
full of people with a variety of views and opinions, that I have no
right to project my own thoughts onto as if they were theirs. Unless
you are a character in one of my stories...if that is the case, you
are all mine have enough to worry about already!
