It’s noteworthy that much of the ‘self-help’ and ‘self-improvement’ advice sounds an awful lot like phrases taken right out of scripture. A wide variety of scripture, I might add.
I read a lovely essay about a woman who discovered that the child she was carrying tested positive for Down’s. Some advisors advised her to end the pregnancy. She did not. The essay was not about ‘choice’; it was about letting go of her expectations of what her life should be and allowing life to happen, with all its twists and turns and surprises. She quoted a Buddhist phrase at the beginning of her essay which sounded so much like words from the New Testament reminding us that a grain of wheat must die in order to become more fully itself. Let go of your little mind and let life surprise you.
What has this to do with writing? Well, quite a bit actually.
