There is No Block

Illustrated with Some Quotes from The Paradoxes of Michi-no-Tetsu 未知の鉄

The Iron is the teacher, none wiser, for he reveals the self; The Iron is the student- does he not move according to your instructions?

Perhaps you are like me and you like to lift weights.  If so, you also, in your heart, hate to lift them as well.  It’s not really the lifting you like, but what comes with it- the muscles, the sense of accomplishment, the feeling of having used time productively, the (very) occasional winsome side-glance from a woman half your age.  But fundamentally you lift weights because you’re supposed to, as a kind of duty, because that’s how the rot is staved off, because rotting is bad and you know because you’re surrounded by it.  If you’re a teacher you experience this in a particular way, observing the spongy e-sports physiques of the leaders of tomorrow.  You don’t want to be them and you don’t want to be your own father, grunting his way off the recliner to get another beer on (watching the) game day like you remember from your own youth.  So you lift, but deep down, it’s not pleasant.

The Iron is your friend, he is always there for you; The Iron is your enemy, he opposes your will with his very being.

If you are like me you also like to write.  I write for my job and I write as a matter of personal expression.  I try to post something on Substack every four or five days, generally between 2,500 and 3,000 words, so about 5,500 words per week on average.  Some do more and some do less, according to their inclination.  I write for the same reason I lift- it’s what I’m supposed to do.  It’s a duty to say things that should be said by someone who knows how to say them.  I also do enjoy what comes with it- the kind words, the engagement, the conversations I get to have with interesting people who are more talented and productive than I am.  I don’t know if any women half my age are hanging on my words, as Substack is without DMs, so I can only guess there are scores of young ladies ready to hurl panties after reading my hot takes on koalas and The Secret History.

The Iron is secrecy, he sits and moves in silence; The Iron is frankness, what truth does he withhold?

That last bit was a joke, some dry humor I thought sounded witty.  Jokes are scary.  Writing a joke is a leap of faith. It’s like jumping out of an airplane; you really hope you land the way you anticipate.  Are you laughing?  I can’t know, sitting in front of my computer writing this, nor will I know unless people write comments.  And even then, are they just being nice- did they really think it was funny?  Stuff like that will eat you alive if you let it.  That sort of thing will consume you with fear. 

The Iron is an empty vessel that awaits your will; The Iron is fullness that lacks nothing for his sufficiency.

Perhaps you know this sensation from lifting weights as well. When one performs a deadlift, one loads up the bar, squares up following a prescribed sequence of lifting cues, and then lifts.  The glutes and forearms catch the first strain, then as the bar ascends the entire posterior chain engages.  Brought to waist height, you lock out the bar, then bring it back down in a reverse of he prescribed sequence.  All of this is contingent on that very first part, that initial lift.  This is the moment when you discover something indisputably true about yourself: whether or not you are strong enough.  Unlike with writing, the evidence of success is clear and immediate. But the fear is the same. 

The Iron is transparency, he shows what he is; The Iron is a mirror; he shows what you are.

If you are like me you feel the exact same emotion sitting at a keyboard as you do standing in front of a barbell.  Our responses to that fear are probably the same as well.  We first of all hesitate.  We perform a million little dodges to avoid lifting; we reapply chalk, we take a drink from our water bottle, pick a new song on the playlist to psych us up, go down, come back up, check our foot spacing, go back down.  We do this to avoid the reckoning that the lift will bring about.  Likewise, when we write, we have a million distractions all strategically placed to help us avoid the obvious- we have something to say, but are scared, on some level, to say it.  What is interesting about the phenomenon is that poor lifter and writers don’t really have this problem.  No one who puts up two wheels on a deadlift feels one way or another about how many times he can do it.  It’s a problem only for those who are genuinely committed to excellence and have demonstrated it in the past.  The same is true for writing.  Bad writers spend their free time churning out terrible takes in quick succession without a thought to how poorly they are executed.  Writers block is a condition only suffered by the truly talented.  It comes from a place of past success; the fear lies in one’s lack of confidence that one will be able to continue that success and improve upon it. 

The Iron is the revelation of strength; The Iron is the revelation of weakness.

That fear is not a bad thing in itself.  It’s a sign of commitment to excellence and a willingness to reflect on one’s abilities, motives, and talents.  But it must be overcome.  Like all fear, it must be driven out with love, the extinction of the ego and transcendent purpose.  Writing and lifting are duties for those who can do them, and thus, are things we owe to God, to our friends and loved ones, and to ourselves. One day you will blow a lift.  One day you will be made aware of your weakness.  The man who is strong enough to lift 1,000 pounds is the man who cannot lift 1,001.  That awareness can destroy you, can lead you to drugs and the ruin of your body if you let it.  Likewise, you will probably write something one day that will not work.  Something about its execution will have failed.  Even if you avoid this, you will certainly put out something that others will misunderstand or even ridicule.  It will, by some twist of the cosmic knife, be something deeply personal to you.  Such is life.  Most of us on this side of things politically and culturally believe we are at war.  War hurts.  Sometimes we are wounded by the enemy, sometimes friendly fire, sometimes betrayal.  We fight on because it is our duty. 

The Iron is outside of us- is he not in our hands; The Iron is a part of us- is he not in our blood?

To those of you suffering from any form of writers’ block I encourage you to drive through the fear, to overcome it and know that if you did not still have important things to say you would not have any hesitancy in saying them.  The very awareness of the value of your ideas is the fuel for the anxiety you have in expressing yourself.  Rid yourself of considerations of how much you lifted in the past.  Your max lift, in words or metal, exists in a moment, a transitory thing that reflects a confluence of factors outside of your control.  Each work you create exists in its own moment, a moment that has come and awaits your contribution.  I await hearing from you, whoever you are, and if you have gotten this far, I suspect I will soon.