Create Something!
I grabbed my right hand with the other in an effort to stop the shooting pain running from the gap between my pinky and ring finger up through my elbow. Occasionally the pain stopped to throb in my wrist. I tried everything to no avail; ice, heat, hand stretches. Then I remembered that there was one more thing I could try.
Perhaps the Oracle was right when she stopped me on my way out of the Black-owned bookstore on 39th, one of about 125 Black-owned bookstores in the nation. There, with stained glass windows made by her brother and shelves lined with every shade of Black and fifty shades of freedom, she saw me shaking my wrist from side to side.
“What do you do?” she asked.
“I’m a lawyer.” I replied
“No, I mean creatively?”
“Well,” as I thought of my latest endeavor, “I’m trying to write.”
“And have you been writing?”
“No,” I said embarrassed, but not enough to lie, “not creatively.”
The Oracle’s brown lips parted and I could see just the bottom of her overbite. She smiled as if she was proud that I had finally come around to the point, “when you don’t use your gifts, that energy gets trapped where it should be flowing. If a singer don’t sing, her throat will get sore. If a dancer stops dancing, his legs become restless and painful. Start writing and watch if that wrist don’t get better.”
I replied in the only way one can to a divine order, “Yes ma’am.”
Today, when my wrist started hurting, I remembered the Oracle’s words and pulled out my laptop to start writing. And, in just the time it took to write the above, the gap between my pinky and ring finger relaxed and widened. My wrist feels lighter. Nothing is shooting up and down my arm. Instead, everything is resting in place–as if each tendon was simply awaiting their assignment; as if my fingers were dancers backstage waiting for their cue. And once on stage, in the light swaying gently and swiftly within their purpose, they feel no pain. They just shine. Inevitably, the show ends and the lights go out, but the memory of that time in the light remains and heals when I am in my darker places.
We all have gifts, and, as the Oracle said, when we fail to use our gifts the trapped creative energy can hurt us trying to escape. What hurts on your body? Where are those sore spots that no doctor will treat seriously, but that constantly nag at you? I am not as wise as the old sage in the bookshop, but maybe your body is telling you to let your creative energy flow through that place. Wherever that place is on your body, make something with it. Create something, and watch if it don’t get better.