You may be interested in what writing LOVE LIES meant to me, my source of inspiration, the reality of writing, the highs and lows I experienced, my personal struggle, why I feel so passionate about writing mindfully as a resource for self-development and how I tackled my own journal writing.
Introduction to LOVE LIES: A Journal
I had a need to write down exactly what was going on inside me. I felt as if the pace of life was running ahead of me and I thought I could never catch up with it. By resorting to Mindful Writing, I was able to pay attention to myself exactly as I was, not as someone who was always one step behind life. I experienced writing LOVE LIES: A Journal as a highly focused, almost meditative and certainly cathartic activity, which took me beyond the written word to a deeper sense of self, and to a more intuitive experience of reality.
Hear my story
What I’m about to say now may have an echo in your life. I already wrote stories, and even embarked on my first novel, when I was a young boy. At grammar school in Germany, I was good at story writing. I was often asked to read out what I had written in front of the class. However, in the ups and downs of life that followed, I forgot about my special gift. Only in my fifties, when I trained as a therapeutic counsellor and had to write a journal, did I rediscover my passion for writing. When my two-year journal was assessed, the feedback was so positive it encouraged me to start writing again. It felt like reconnecting with my true self.
Journal writing was how I expressed my thoughts and feelings. I had a lot of stuff to sort out. I was tangled up inside. I wrote things down to help me and others. And I used André to talk my talk. I began André’s story hoping to make a contribution to ‘literature as medicine’, as it shows that we create our own monsters in life. Then we have to deal with our monsters. How we deal with them shapes us. The book is about André facing those monsters, and his eventual growth and acceptance of life’s uncertainty.
But let me share something wonderful; in the writing of my complicated, painful memories the words started to shape themselves into a novel. André, rather than continuing to be the carrier of my pain, took on a life of his own between the pages, and slowly these pages became a novel – André’s novel.
What got me going?
Reading, simply to while away my time or to escape from the world, has never really satisfied me, though a good Agatha Christie can occasionally serve a purpose. For me, reading has always been a way towards leading a fuller, more meaningful life – until I discovered writing. Writing brings into play all three centres of the personality at once: mind, heart and body. There is the physical act of writing down in so many word symbols the story that is told from the heart. In that sense, writing has a more holistically therapeutic or healing quality for me than other forms of self-expression.
How I wrote
Counselling training: during my training as a therapeutic counsellor I was introduced to the idea of an internal supervisor, a kind of objective inner onlooker or inner eye that helps create a distance between counsellor and client. The purpose of this imaginary supervisor is to encourage the therapist to adopt a non-judgmental and detached yet empathic and compassionate attitude towards the client. This marked the beginning of my interest in Mindful Writing.
Journal writing: this was mandatory during my counselling training and encouraged me to use the ‘journal’ format for my novel. The central theme of LOVE LIES: A Journal is the self-discovery of the central character André. It reflects the importance of knowing yourself, which is the very essence of mindful writing, so that you get to the point where you are able to dip in and out of what life offers in terms of people, events, things, seeing them for what they are and thus enabling you to identify what’s useful.
Self-reflection: this is symbolised by the mirror in the novel, a technique used to become more aware of learned attitudes, beliefs, motivations and behaviours. I am becoming my own client in and through André, who – like all the other characters in the novel – acts as a mirror to me. Through André, I can bear to look at all the demons and monsters (the lies and delusions of my mind) that bedevil my own life: disappointment, questions of safety and security, the torment of uncertainty, old patterns of behaviour, magical beliefs versus reality of everyday humdrum life, men versus women, real versus unreal, push and pull of life, balance and falling down, fear of abandonment and loss, love versus hate, meaninglessness, suspicion of freedom, fear of annihilation and existential isolation.
Fictional character: I chose a fictional character to create necessary distance from my own life. All characters in the novel are aspects of André’s own personality. I have turned him inside out, so to speak. Thus, instead of psycho-analysing André by looking inside him, I am telling a moving human story with apparently real people filling his outside world. It could be said, therefore, that the novel is like a heroic journey into ‘André’ (André’s German family name ‘von Aussen’ means ‘from outside’). Though narrated in the first person, André’s story is not told from my own personal perspective, but from the position of an open-minded, ever-learning mindful observer. The novelist and the reader are watching André’s drama unfold on their own inner stage.
André’s struggle: André wants to be free from the pain of his past. Things, people, events trigger responses and we follow him through his struggles. These triggers make him think deeply. André tries to make sense of what’s happening by making sense of his past which, he suspects, keeps him in a stranglehold. André wants to be free of the past so he can deal with the present better. He also has a fear of attachment, to dreams, desires, hopes and expectations rather than seeing what’s real and now. He wants to avoid the pitfalls of life but ultimately sees that he can never be sure and the struggle continues. The novel ends on a note where André does feel more comfortable with uncertainty. I attempted to write this mindfully, paying attention to how I actually felt and I was happy to help André reach a degree of awareness. Of course, you still see a tortured soul.
Read an extract
In this scene, we see André regaining consciousness in hospital. He has narrowly escaped death at the hands of his rejected lover. (see page 492)
I regained consciousness in the local hospital. The clean, fresh smell of the bed linen made me wonder for a moment whether I had ended up in Heaven, after all.
As the outside world came flooding in upon my senses, I could feel a wave of energy surge through my body. Yet, at the same time, everything was beautifully empty and exquisitely meaningless.
There was freshness in everything I saw.
The trees outside my window were stirring in the breeze, and all the leaves were dancing in the spring morning.
I could hear the birds singing everywhere, and their sweet melodies filled my heart with such joy, it was as if I had heard their little voices for the first time.
Tears stung my dry eyes. The sun shone through the trees, shedding a soft light on the daffodils and lilies, which were gently swaying to and fro.
It seemed as if they were nodding with approval for me to begin a new life.
The dreamy atmosphere was interrupted by the appearance of the nurse. She greeted me with a breezy “Good morning, Mr. Fong Owssenk, how are you feeling on this beautiful spring morning?”
I’ve got to get myself a new name, was all I could think, and it made me smile a little. “You’ve got an early visitor,” the nurse said, a little louder. I noticed a gentleman standing behind her.
“Well, André, you’re not off my patients’ list yet, are you,” the gentleman chuckled, as he came up to my bedside. It was Dr. Proctor, my GP. The nurse gave me a smile and walked away.
Becoming more serious, the doctor went on: “It’s good to see you looking so much better than you did when your boys found you in that garage, a hair’s breadth from death, I reckon.”
He paused, in deep thought for a moment. Then he pointed to the other side of my bed and said: “Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the astuteness of our private detectives here…”
The doctor stopped there. He just smiled at me. I turned my head. I saw Andrew and Elmer standing close by, holding me in their loving gaze. It was like looking into the golden mirror of eternal youth.
I turned back to the doctor. I smiled and tried to talk, but my throat felt so coarse, I only managed to reach out and squeeze his hands. He swallowed hard and squeezed my hands, too.
We were together for a while in silence. Then the doctor got ready to leave. “It really is good to see you, André, after what you’ve been through.”
As he was about to go, he looked at me intently: “Maybe the time has come for you to go and see Dr. Baraka, that is … once you’ve got your bearings and your voice back. No point otherwise, aye, what?”
He paused, giving me a knowing wink.
“You never can tell,” he mused, “Dr. Baraka might be a blessing from Heaven.”
With a smile, he departed.
The boys, puzzled by the doctor’s cryptic remarks, also smiled and soon after took their leave, too.
I felt at peace. Somehow I knew I’d be okay.
And as for the blessing from Heaven … well, it was already there … the seed was already sown. Dr. Baraka couldn’t help me.
Why fill my head up with other people’s stuff? No, I won’t follow the doctor’s advice. It isn’t necessary. The whole world is my teacher. I just have to watch things with a clear mind … my thoughts … my feelings … and what I do with them … or what they do with me. Life is about seeing, reflecting and letting be.
I am a self-grower, not a green wheelie bin … hahahaha … the green wheelie bin … stuffed with other people’s thoughts and opinions … hahaha …and me … clinging on to it … unable to let go … attached to other people’s stuff…
What a formidable teacher the green wheelie bin had been!
“Hello, Mr. Fong Owssenk,” I heard a voice calling me. It was the nurse again. “Are you all right?” I responded with an absent-minded nod and a vague smile. “I’ve made you a nice cup of tea, Mr. Fong Owssenk.”
