Do It For You

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

- - The Buddha

A woman was in a forest, gathering herbs, when she heard a magical sound. It was more beautiful than the calls of songbirds and she followed the music until she reached a clearing. A group of people were sitting in a circle. In the center sat a young man in a tunic and sandals, his eyes closed, playing a wooden flute.

The woman joined the group, sat on the earth and listened. It was captivating. When the song was finished, the flutist opened his eyes and looked out at the people surrounding him. They clapped and cheered. He smiled at the woman. “This is your first time here,” he said.

“Yes, it is,” she said. “I have a question. Your music is enchanting. Where do you get your inspiration?”

“I play for these people sitting here. When they like what I play, I feel happy.”

“But who taught you to play?”

Sadness filled his eyes. “If you stay here until I finish my next song, I’ll answer your question.”

When he was through and the people dispersed, he tucked his flute into a carrier, slung it across his body and gestured for the woman to follow him. He led her deep into the forest where they walked along a riverbank and climbed a steep hill. When they reached the top, they stopped beside a stony path to a meadow with vibrant wildflowers. The flutist pointed to a solitary figure sitting in the tall grass, holding a flute. As this man began to play, the woman felt her chest expand. Tears flooded her eyes and she cried for life, for love and for this magnificent expression of beauty.

When the song was over, she whispered to her guide, “Is he your teacher? His music is the voice of the angels. How does he do it?”

“I look to other people for approval,” he said. “My teacher plays only for himself.”

Craving someone else’s approval is a sticky web that affects the quality of your life. You’ll never be satisfied. If people tell you they don’t like you, you’ll swell with disappointed and depressed. If they tell you they do like you, you’ll swell with pride but a few minutes later, you won’t believe them and you’ll be searching for approval all over again.

I was in a workshop when the facilitator said, “We fall in love and we wait for someone else to say, ‘I love you.’ We place great importance on it and evaluate our relationships with that in mind. But once we hear it, we don’t believe it. The only love that completely satisfies us is what we have for ourselves.”

If you want to find beauty in the world and express it to other people, first you have to delight yourself. If you want someone to love what you did, you have to love it yourself. During the eighties, I took a dozen trips to the Philippines to research the faith healers. I had extraordinary experiences and after the third trip, I decided to write a book about it. I thought about what other people would think about what I wrote and I started by explaining what faith healing was, who performed it and where, and I offered some details about when it started and how effective it was. I read it back. By page two, I was bored. It read like an academic text and I sounded like a know-it-all who thought I knew more than anyone else.

I tossed it and started over. I wrote from my heart. I wrote about what it was like to be in the Philippines, how it looked and how it smelled. How much I loved the people. The healing mode I was studying was controversial, so I told the truth about how my skepticism turned into wonder. As I wrote, I experienced all the emotions that had moved me back then and when I re-read it, I liked what I had done. I found it honest and interesting. It touched my own heart. If it moved other people, I was fine with it. If it didn’t, it was still fine because I had satisfied myself.

If there’s something you want to do but you’re afraid no one else will like it, do it for yourself. You’re important enough. Last weekend I went to see a couple of girlfriends and read them a piece I had written. I forgot about who was listening and I listened to my own words. It turned out to be an intimate experience for all of us. I left satisfied. They did, too, but even if they hadn’t, I was uplifted because I had done a great job of expressing my heart and soul.

Literary Critic, Cyril Connolly, said in 1933:

“It’s better to write for yourself and have no public,

Than to write for the public and have no self.”