Writing As Selfless Service
In writing we write for ourselves. It’s true. We write because we love writing, the act of writing is a joy. By following our own bliss, we are working toward the greater good. But we also write for a reader. Once someone reads our writing, it becomes a gift of service. As we write, we imagine the enjoyment our story will bring to the readers. They will laugh and cry and think and talk about it and develop new curiosities and ideas about life. Writing and reading is a sharing of minds, opening hearts and perspectives.
Envision now that we write only for our reader, for pure love for our readers. Writers are readers. We’re bookworms, booklovers. We love a good book. So, we’re both ends of the giving and receiving chain. Think of your favorite book and imagine that the author wrote that book with you in mind, with the desire to bring enjoyment into your life. Doesn’t that idea just give you all the feels or what?
I have a friend who has high expectations of his friendships. They are conditional. If you are his friend, you must call so many times a week or text him so many times a day. You must invite him out. He will notice if he is always the one initiating the invites. If you don’t follow these conditions of his friendship, he will make you feel bad about it, and to the extreme, decide that he can no longer be your friend. Do you know someone like this? There’s a lot of pressure to be what this friend wants you to be instead of this friend accepting you as you are. To me, that’s not at all what friendship is about.
When I think of friendship, I think of both people benefiting each other, of a symbiotic relationship. More than that, when I have a friend, my gift of friendship is out of love for that person. I never expect anything in return for their friendship. I act towards my friend with the kindness of my heart because I love and care for them. I do not expect any rewards. Of course, there are natural benefits such as comradery, companionship and good times, but this is not why I take my friend to coffee or buy them a present for their birthday. I do these things because I care about them. Not because I want them to also get me a present for my birthday. In fact, I never expect anything from my friends except for kindness.
We give from the love in our hearts because we care. Not seeking something in return. Swami Sivananda says: “Man generally plans to get the fruits of his works before he starts any kind of work. The mind is so framed that it cannot think of any kind of work without remuneration or reward. A selfish man cannot do any service. He will weigh the work and the money in a balance. Selfless Service is unknown to him.”
Though rewards might come as a natural side effect of our giving. Like the good feelings we get when we volunteer to help at the soup kitchen or donate to someone in need or clean up trash along the riverbank. Those good feelings are a natural byproduct of selfless service, but we do not give to get those feelings. We give out of compassion for other people and living beings. We give from a place of pure love and compassion- selflessly, with no regard for ourselves or the returns we will receive from our actions.
Imagine you wrote to make your reader feel as good as you feel when you finish your favorite book or poem.
Imagine the joy we get from writing is simply a byproduct of giving to others, of giving the world books and stories and essays and poems. What would it look like to write selflessly if we wrote with the pleasure of our reader in mind? It could be a person we know or a book club or a general population of people out in the world. As we write, we want to gift our work to them. This is our present to the world. What kind of special care would we take with this present when we know it is going out into the world and our community of fellow readers, our book tribe?
Writing will always be something we do for ourselves and our own bliss, but we can shift our perspective. We can offer up our writing as a dedication to God or the greater good or our higher self. Visualizing the joy, we bring to our readers and taking the emphasis off of ourselves, writing becomes an act of compassion and selfless service. This shift in intention and attitude away from ourselves and our own ego and toward the idea of being in service to others will make us less miserable writers because it’s not all about us and our egos anymore.
Think of that friend I mentioned earlier. As a writer, if we were him, always demanding that our reader love what we write, understand and process it exactly how we expect them to or just not caring what they think, we would be like that friend who thinks friendship is only to serve himself. But a true friend operates from love, not their own self-centered needs. A writer can also come from a place of love, love for their reader, the desire to bring pleasure to their reader, real or imagined. In this way, your writing becomes a gift of love to the world.
Maybe your writing will be better for it? I don’t know. Maybe you will be a better person or writer for it. I have no idea. That’s irrelevant. Giving is the point. Period. As the spiritual masters Tribe Called Quest say, “Do it all for the love, y’all.”
Writing Prompt:
Write a poem or story or essay for someone you love, maybe someone whose birthday is approaching. As you write it, keep them in mind and imagine how you can write the piece to give them the most enjoyment. Remember, you’re not writing for yourself, you’re writing for your loved one. So if you hate scifi but they love it, you better try writing the best scifi you can. They’re gonna love it even if it sucks anyway because it came from you and you created it especially for them. What does it feel like to write for someone else’s enjoyment? How does it change the way you write?
