Jim Ellis
Editor
The seed is planted in all of us, no matter from where we’ve come, or what we endure throughout our life. Our honorable task at hand is to cultivate that seed, give it what it needs to grow, and then act on higher impulses to have it fully bloom.
And what is that seed? Our greatness.
Parents, guardians and caretakers who fail to nurture this greatness, who falter in providing necessary space to uncover this potential – due to their own pain, limitations, condemnation, controlling natures, or unconsciousness – will stand in time as barriers to overcome.
But overcome we must. For the seed, that potential, remains … on some level untainted and eternally preserved.
Over time, as we move through our lives, we will be given two responses to our attempts to realize this “greatness.”
- Affirmation
- Delay
The affirmations are the positive responses to our endeavors. This is the boost, the cheerleader cheer, the uplift from those who want the best for us. For me, a simple creative writer who dearly wanted to express myself and inspire others through this expression, my affirmation showed itself this way:
- Mrs Ryan, my junior year high school English teacher who looked me right in the eye and said, “You are a good writer.” My creative soul was freed that day.
- Liz Mullen, a college newspaper editor, who gave me the opportunity to write my own column for the Daily 49er.
- Scientist Fred Bell who said that I would make it as a writer, and that his gut intuition was never wrong.
- A couple of mystics – Dollee and Madeline – who foretold a vision of me writing and broadcasting about “what was really going on” in our society.
Just as there are affirmations for our greatness, so too are what I call the “delays.” These are the bumps in the road, the doubters, the insults and criticisms that appear to destroy our dreams and dash our visions. They don’t actually kill the greatness, but rather veil them in the doubt that may already exist within us. These only delay the unveiling of our greatness, as we learn the vital lessons to fully embrace what exists deeply within. For me, I can thank these such delays:
- Years through childhood, through the developmental years, not believing I was even seen. An invisible existence, unimportant, holding no value.
- The dude in my high school German class who, for some lame-ass reason, came up to me and told me my writing had poor sentence structure. How the hell would he know? That screwed with my head for years.
- Five screenplays – a few movie scrips and a couple sitcoms – that garnered little attention and so far no audience.
- So many posts that go without notice, or likes or thumbs that are up.
- Recently, that one 20-year-old punk ass dumbshit who critiqued my writing, as editor for a supposed-to-be hip men’s online magazine. He wanted to send me a video of him going through each of my lines of “clunky” writing. Save it kid.
With each delay, with each underage critic, with each criticism, we are given the opportunity to look within and see our next strategic move to reclaim that greatness that is growing larger and larger – finding newer and newer avenues of expression.
It will, in the end, be something to affirm.
James Anthony Ellis is an award-winning playwright, journalist and filmmaker, who is the author of eight books, including the men-focused “The Honor Book” available HERE. Image
