On Seeking And Choosing Ways Forward

A road map of sorts to understanding the What and Why of Bright Side Writings

Short on reading time? Then listen along instead, as I do the reading for you!

Last week I bought myself a treat – a 3-pack of shocking pink Moleskine notebooks. In all fairness yes, notebooks are necessities for writers so… really? A treat? The drub however, is in the shocking pink. Beyond the raggedy pale of any mere journals or jotter pads, I bought these spritely, always-up-for-fun notebooks for a specific purpose: to house my first drafts of these posts. There’s no magic to conjuring these words into existence other than ‘sitting down and doing the work,’ but now it felt time to give these words the respect they deserve - shocking pink at the very least.

Which brings me to the What and Why of these Bright Side Writings - an explanation most other Substack writers appear to do in their very first post. They neatly outline their subject area and intentions right up front, and then deliver accordingly in subsequent posts. The excuse I’m using (for being more than six months in already) is that I’m from Downunder – which means I sometimes approach things from upside-down / inside-out, or just the other way around!

My origin story here is that Tim Minchin’s song Play It Safe, celebrating the 50^th Birthday of the Sydney Opera House, inspired me to write about the many and varied things this song made me feel. Which became my first post: Of Celebrations & Creativity In Anxious Times. I’d already created a placeholder Substack space called Bright Side Writings – so suddenly, without outlining anything of my subject area or my intentions, I was off into an ongoing practice of writing and posting.

The Sydney Opera House - always alluring to my eyes. Photo taken from a ferry, on a recent trip.

Prior to this, the idea of sharing my written words on a regular basis had always appealed, but I hadn’t been able to find a main topic that felt both broad and narrow-focussed enough to inspire fortnightly writing. So I set off in search, and soon discovered something of a red thread running through various old essays and articles. Generally, my stories tend to ‘find the glass half full instead of empty,’ even when confronted with dire events / circumstances / people. This felt like an explorable trope because, let’s face it, life on this planet’s been turning kinda’ dire in recent years. Since well before the pandemic, I’ve noticed people having really tough times in all kinds of ways – on occasion myself included.

So I figured: what if, through my writing, I could share my ability to ‘find the silver lining,’ along with some of my life wealth (meaning my good fortune to come from a stable family, be well educated, have a loving relationship etc.), in case I could provide some small comfort? Maybe by pairing unusual subjects with invitations to view life from different angles, I could show readers a few things they hadn’t thought about before in such ways?

It appears to me that we ‘create’ our lives in an ongoing manner, in a space that is energetically-charged because it’s overflowing with possibilities. It’s precisely where ‘the life we’ve lived so far’ intersects with ‘all the choices available to us,’ and it’s accessible to each and every one of us, at every moment. And yet, many of us become such experts at choosing the same things, over and over, we lose sight of how they’re really affecting us and, worse still, lose our ability of seeing the bright, sparkling, potentially better choices also available to us.

‘Creating a life’ has similarities to ‘creating writing,’ because the process of writing is that of constantly leaping into the unknown. What word should I write next? And what should follow that one? And then which word after that? So each word is essentially a leap into an abyss. But you HAVE to leap. Because that’s the only way you FORCE a net to appear – one that will catch you and deliver you safely to the next word – where you promptly leap again – into a different abyss. And in this manner, word by word, you create a sentence. And then you build another sentence and add to that until you have a paragraph. And if you work hard or you’re lucky – or both – then those paragraphs create a page, and perhaps two or three. And in this leaping and catching manner, creating meaning out of nothing, a story eventually becomes visible, inscribed on a bunch of pages that, had you not leapt and laid claim to that very first word, would still be crisp and blank and… silent.

Writing happens by placing one word after the other. Not dissimilar to walking. We manage to ‘reach a destination’ essentially by placing one foot after the other.

To circle back to my writing idea that emerged… now all I needed was a title, but I couldn’t find one that fit correctly. Until one day a long-unheard song chanced its way past my ears. From Monty Python’s Life of Brian movie: ‘Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life.’ Et voila! Thank you universe! And close behind the title of Bright Side Writings, a tagline arrived as well: ‘Optimism-led, fortnightly-ish stories to brighten these dark times of climate emergency and global strife.’ By searching, I managed to find MY pathway: the one leading INTO the darkness, but TOWARDS the brightness.

From Monty Python’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.

All well and good until it was time to publish my first post. This felt like a leap into an abyss of a totally different magnitude. What would people think? Would they even tell me? What would be my next post? And the one after that? There was only one way to find out. So I hit PUBLISH. Excited, relieved and anxious, all at once.

The Substack button that translates to me as: PUBLISH.

Miraculously enough, not long later my first message arrived, from Pooja Pant, a Nepalese filmmaker friend:

🥰 i woke up at 5.30am filled by all sorts of anxiety that i know stems from what’s happening in Gaza right now. Not knowing what else to do i picked up my phone and saw this writing from you. You are a bright shining light in this darkness. Thank you 🙏🏾

Wow. This response was also ‘of a totally different magnitude,’ because it transcended praise to deliver something more (to me) profound: validation. Apparently my writing had made a difference. As a writer, that’s an amazing thing to hear. Thank you Pooja, and thank you to all who have subsequently Liked or Commented or emailed or told me in person that you appreciate receiving Bright Side Writings. I hope I can continue to be of service to you.

Since then I’ve been quietly amazed at the range of topics that have bubbled to the surface. These include view-changing as a way of changing your perspective, travel as a way of changing your view, nonfiction books for doing something similar, reintegrating nature into human environments, and writings from an ancestor. And then a topic that somewhat ambushed me, because initially I had no idea how much it would interest me, nor how much there was to explore. This became something of an opus that I’m quietly quite proud of, entitled A Splash Of Colour (In Your Day) Parts One, Two and Three that, in addition to my own comments and observations, include insights from Five Wise Friends.

(EXCITING TECHNICAL NOTE: Since A Splash Of Colour Part Two, I’ve been including a Sing-along Listen-along option with each post. So if you find reading time difficult to snag, try listening to me reading the post instead!)

After Part Three though, I hit Pause instead of Publish, for the simple reason that my husband and I embarked on an eight week trip to Australia, where it quickly became apparent that this trip was going to be all about INcoming information. Streaming torrents full of impressions, insights, learnings, wonder, laughter, humility, gratitude and joy, all given extra colours and intensities by some deep, deep sadness.

I knew the time would come again to pick up my pen, but that my job for the time being was to pay attention to all that was happening around me - eventually I would make sense of it all. And already today I have something to share from our trip.

This is my chance discovery of a wondrous book entitled The Dreaming Path - Indigenous Thinking To Change Your Life - by Paul Callaghan and Uncle Paul Gordon. I’d like to share the following passage to give you a taster because, on the earlier topic of validation, sure, this was pretty fun to read, but it also contains plenty more as well. I’ll follow with some additional thoughts - but first the passage:

“As adults, it is important for us to learn, create and share as many stories as possible with our children and with each other and, thanks to modern technology, there is no reason we can’t share those stories right across the world. We have all witnessed how quickly negative stories can flood the planet and how these stories drain us. The antidote is to do the same with positive stories (Ngurrampaa* stories, real-life stories, creative stories) so we can feel inspired by the magnificence that is around us. There really is nothing stopping us.

Sharing positive stories and collectively celebrating the many great things happening all around us will mean we focus on what we have got rather than what we haven’t. It will help us focus on what we have in common rather than our differences. By doing this, we can help create a more united, positive and connected world of understanding, tolerance and respect. By sharing stories, we are generating positive energy and magic in the world – and everyone benefits from that! The more positivity we generate, the more positivity we will receive – and the more magic we will begin to feel in our life.

It is important to note that celebrating the magic in the world is no excuse to shy away from the reality that there are bad things and injustices happening around us as well. By creating unity and trust, we are in a far better position to call out wrongs, engage in truth-telling, expose tokenism and create authentic change in areas where change is very much needed.” **

*Ngurrampaa meaning: my home, the place I come from – but also: my relationship with my place of origin plus everything in this place.
**Passage sourced with explicit permission from author Paul Callaghan.

I hope this resonates. Especially if it finds you pondering whether or not you should share a story of yours, in whatever format or venue, or on whatever platform, or to whomever audience. Take it from Paul Callaghan and Uncle Paul Gordon and take it from me: we NEED these stories - they’re often what help us to overcome, or at the very least come to terms with, the most challenging events in our lives.

I suspect I’ll be dipping into this book more in future posts. And I look forward to sharing an extra post with you in the coming days, which contains stories that ripple outwards from the central point of a wonderfully inspiring meeting I had with an old friend, who taught me huge things about strength in the face of adversity.

Until then, love and light,

Matthew.