Do you find yourself too often shaking your fist at God and asking, “When, oh when? . . . When will I finally get published or called back? . . . When will I be able to quit my day job? . . . When will I have enough money to write or paint or design or dance full-time? . . . When will I meet someone who will support me in the creating I must do?” The answer to all such questions may seem illogical at best and outrageous and barely palatable at worst. But it’s simple.

The Squirming Truth

The truth is this: Each of us, no matter how dire or sad or frustrating our circumstances, is where we want to be. No, I’ll be more accurate: each of us is where we need to be.

We are where we are because we need to learn certain things. And we can’t get to the next place without learning them. This principle applies to everything in life, including your chosen mode of creativity.

What does this really mean? After our reflexive cry of “Unfair!” it means that everything in our lives is connected. Whatever we experience is so we can learn from it and make better choices. If we don’t learn, we repeat the experience, as you may have noticed, in different guises, until we do. If you keep setting the toaster to extra dark, you’ll keep burning most pieces. If you keep turning off the alarm and turning over, you’ll continue that frenzied rush to get to work every morning. If you keep sending out your writing or going to auditions without continuous practice and study in writing or acting, you’ll keep getting more rejections than acceptances and more silent phones than callbacks.

As we learn—finally—from each experience, we’re led to the next. This is one of life’s causes and effects, and it is inescapable. You may chafe at its apparent unfairness. So do I. And when I get too exasperated, I return to a poem discovered during one of those black periods of railing at God. The poem is perfectly called “No Other Way”:

Could we but see the pattern of our days,

We should discern how devious were the ways

By which we came to this, the present time . . . .

We should forget the hurts, the wanderings, the fears,

The wastelands of our life, and know

That we could come no other way or grow

Into our good without these steps our feet

Found hard to take, our faith found hard to meet.[1]

Look hard at the last three lines. They mean that whatever is now in our lives, on our desks, in our inboxes, however hard it is to take, it’s supposed to be here. We need to learn its lessons.

So we can stamp our feet, curse, and fling around doing our tasks with resentment and outright hate—or we can make another decision.

This is to accept what’s in front of us with grace and gratitude and invest ourselves fully in it. As we do, we’ll learn what we need to so we can get to the next step. And we can make the process easier by recognizing and accepting another heartening law: none of what we’re experiencing is wasted.

Every Experience Adds

When I was struggling to write regularly, I had an office job needed for survival. But I secretly felt it was beneath me. I scarcely talked to coworkers, did my work grudgingly, and found it ever more difficult to show up each morning. Then a friend, more enlightened than I, enlightened me to a new way of looking at my job. I would never “graduate,” she said, until I began to put myself wholly into it. Then, she said, I’d learn as much from it as it had to teach.

I was a recalcitrant student. But as I gradually followed my friend’s advice, the job became more bearable. Looking back, I see how much of what I learned in that office I use today. For example, my typing and computer skills were honed and immeasurably facilitated my editing and writing. My ability to interact with people improved, so I could more easily talk about my writing and eventually attract new business. Seeing the boss put in long hours after 5:00 o’clock spurred my discipline to write after a day’s work, so I became more able and motivated to write more. I finally saw that the disdained office job taught me some of the most crucial things I needed to learn to get closer to my dream.

But I still had a lot to learn. Often, what we so fervently crave right now we may be nowhere near ready for. Can you look at yourself honestly and admit this may be true for you? It certainly was so for me—during that time of agonizing over not writing and resenting my job, what I needed was a rigorous apprenticeship to learn discipline, practice skills, admit to my own talents, and simply keep at it.

Take a look at some of the distasteful things you’ve felt forced to do, or some of the “mistakes” you’ve made. What have they given you that you’ve used or are using today, especially in your creative endeavors?

Some examples from writer colleagues: a poet who edits cookbooks transfers her skills for condensing a recipe to the fewest possible words to her terse, haiku-like poems. A novelist who’s a tech writer applies his talents for telling people how to build engines to highly detailed precise descriptions of his settings and characters’ idiosyncrasies. A writer who enrolled in a vocational school realized her error and dropped out after a semester. She used the experience to sell an article to a career magazine about carefully assessing yourself and your interests.

I once had a summer job at a camp and, under protest and with much sweat, was recruited to help build a cottage on the grounds. I would have much rather stayed in the air-conditioned office to type and answer phones, but in my overalls and work gloves I learned about lintels, drywall, and molly bolts. I’d never been interested in any of these things before nor did the exposure prompt me to change careers. But three years later, when I was writing a story about a couple who discovered an old house in the country and started to refurbish it, I drew on this experience. The technical terms popped easily into my mind, and I used my earlier feelings to express the wife’s frustration and disgust with the mess that surrounded her.

I could cite many other examples, from famous to unfamous but highly successful people of all kinds. They’ve got one thing in common: their delays, mistakes, and apparent wrong turns turned out to be precisely the right preparation for what they later needed and wanted to do. My resolve has often been renewed by these words, which echo the poem above, of spiritual counselor Catherine Ponder:

Everything moves in cycles, both in time and space. Regardless of the number of breaks that appear in the lines of your life, growth is taking place. Never fight the darkness because through it, growth takes place. The more light you turn on in your life, the quicker will be your growth.[2]

Your Turn

Now it’s your turn. Think about something you’ve learned, seen, or heard, past or current, in a situation you couldn’t get out of. Did you use it in your creating? How? How would you like to use it in the future?

If you’re resisting the idea of the overlap between a day job and an evening of following your bliss, open your mind. Wherever you work now—in a restaurant, hotel, office, retail store, school, hospital, or on a ship, plane, or train—look around. Everyone and all environments provide material for your creative work. Overheard conversations and arguments, melodies of hot-dog hawkers, the feeling of snow on your face, the rhythmic undulations of standing bus passengers trying to keep their balance. A songwriter I know got the idea for what became a hit staring at an ad while he rode the subway.

So, instead of resenting your abhorrent present, make friends with it. See what you can gain from it. Instead of rejecting your shameful past, thank it.

The great jazz musician Miles Davis said, “Do not fear mistakes. There are none.”[3] We rarely, if ever, see where the path is leading. Maybe that’s why we fear, shudder, regret, and rage at its turns.

Instead, whether you’re looking at a repugnant present or unforgiven past, see its necessity, its connection to where you are and yearn to be, its invaluable lessons. Here’s an exercise to help you.

Your Nothing Is Wasted List

1. Allocate 10 to 15 minutes before, after, or between the many activities that occupy you and the diversions that constantly beckon. Sit in a quiet spot with paper and pen.

2. Jot down the events in your life that you consider major. These may include, for example, a childhood move to a new town, the birth of your sister, your parents’ divorce or remarriage, your departure for college, getting a certain job, winning something, losing something, going to a certain event, meeting a certain person, missing a great opportunity, making what you’ve always thought of as a giant “mistake.”

What you put down doesn’t have to be momentous or meaningful to anyone else. Sometimes the most trivial moment can be a stupendous turning point. When I did this exercise with a friend, she wrote, “Craving a Mounds bar.” Why? As she ran to a local newsstand to buy a quick pick-up, she literally bumped into the man who propelled her into journalism, a desire she’d craved since early adolescence. After the apologies, she discovered he was the editor of a city newspaper, and his encouragement led her to go to journalism school. When she graduated, she looked him up, and he promptly gave her a freelance assignment. She later became the feature editor on his paper.

3. When you’ve got a good list down, look at it. It doesn’t have to chronicle everything. You can always add to it later. Now that you’ve opened the door, you’ll very likely think of more things later.

4. Take a deep breath and really look at your list. Ask your mind to reveal the connections. Sometimes they’ll be prompted by looking at a relatively recent event or outcome and asking yourself, “How did I get there?”

5. Reflect more and free associate. As you quietly listen to yourself, like the journalist you’ll start to see things: “If I hadn’t done this, I wouldn’t have encountered that. If I hadn’t missed the train, I wouldn’t have met Ann. If I’d taken that job, I wouldn’t have had to develop my letter-writing skills, and I wouldn’t be writing a novel-in-letter-form now.”

6. Start numbering the items in their connective sequences. For some, the connections will be instantly obvious, like my office job to computer skills. For others, you may not immediately see the line, but as you keep looking at your list, your mind will give you more links. You’ll also begin to see obvious groupings of events—the windshield sticker of a college that led to your finding the perfect course to take that led to your professional certificate that led to a great job that led to meeting the person you married.

7. Put your list away in a private place. No one else has to see it to question, deride, laugh, or pull it apart.

8. In a day or two, revisit your list. Many more insights will come, and you’ll uncover more relationships.

9. Acknowledge these. They’ll help you see, again, that no experience is wasted. Each experience prepares us for the next. In fact, as the poem tells us, each is absolutely necessary for our growth.

10. And, finally, with your new knowledge and recognition, forgive yourself for all those past “wastelands.” Even if you think you’re not ready to stop blaming yourself, try it. Just repeat, “I forgive myself. No mistakes. Nothing is wasted.” Repeat and repeat.

Sooner or later, as you keep saying these words, slivers of self-absolution will peek through. You’ll feel lighter and more energized. You may even feel moments of inexplicable happiness.

Now you’ll look at your past anew, discover its blessings, and use their richness in your creative works. You’ll truly know that nothing in your life is wasted.

© 2012 Noelle Sterne

Adapted from Noelle Sterne, Trust Your Life: Forgive Yourself and Go After Your Dreams (Unity Books, 2011).

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