I just read an article that said that every good writer has an emotional anchor...something deeply personal that happened to them that they can tie their work to. By having that anchor to ground them, they can then go crazy and really write about anything, because they will always have that deeply personal experience to pull them back to reality.
I disagree. While I am sure everyone has something deeply personal that has impacted their lives, I think the anchor just works to hold you back. It stops you from reaching your full potential through fear, or sadness or both. To really move forward in life, or to write something different you need to cut the chain to the anchor as best you can. You want no distractions as you ride the stormy seas of life and write about them. In my life, my wife's death is my anchor. It numbed me, and made it very hard to get anything accomplished. My daughters were the winds in my sail, however. My daughters needed me to be functional. I couldn't just sit down and allow life to pass me by. The girls needed a father who could provide a stable home and an atmosphere of hope. These things can't be accomplished while living in the past. Each day, I focused on doing the little things that needed to be done to make sure my daughters were taken care of properly. The more I focused on getting these little things accomplished, the more I returned to the land of the living. The anchor had been attached to my ankle and had been pulling me under. My daughters were the lifeboat that offered me the opportunity to live on and travel to another place. As I battled on to reach the lifeboat, I found that my struggle became less and less. The anchor was shrinking as I got closer to my goal. Today, my anchor is pocket sized. My life is once again moving forward. I enjoy helping my daughters to learn and to grow and new horizons surround me. In the end, no one's journey through life needs an anchor. It is very hard to move ahead when you have an anchor set. Instead, Instead, we need a compass. An underlying belief that will help us to make decisions about where we are going with our lives. No one's life should be without direction. My wife used to say she liked to "go with the flow". Life is a gigantic ocean, but sometimes setting yourself adrift with the currents will still crash you on the rocks. It did that with my wife's journey. No going with the flow for me! I've used my moral compass to set my goals and while my life ship will occasionally approach the rocks, I have so far been successful in eventually turning my ship away from the danger. An emotional anchor, or a moral compass...which would you rather have? For me, I'll take the compass any day.
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