When stories become a debt to be paid

I used to think of my stories as sunbeams, snatched out of thin air somewhere between wherever they came from and wherever they were reaching to go. Borrowed light that for a few moments in time became mine to bend and direct as I pleased to play with shadows and illuminate things that normally would not get to stand out.

I always knew it was a stolen joy, fleeting and viewable only from where I was sitting. Something that would pass into memory only if I somehow managed to quickly trace its outline right then and there. That was what made it so special. I had to be there. At the right time. In the right place. Looking from just the right angle. With my heart open and ready to see more than my eyes.

That is how it used to be. When my proverbial pen leapt like a fish going upstream and my words were scattered light dancing on the rapid flow of the water. I had to be there. And finding ‘there’ was an everyday adventure. A chase for the unpredictable. Easter eggs I stumbled on without even knowing I had been looking. They found me – and my job was simply to let them.

I am not sure when all that changed. Or how. Or even why. But somewhere along the way, the adventurous path became a toll road. Marker stones sprung like soldiers along the road, measuring progress where miles had never mattered. Directing the untamed stream into an obedient, docile flow. Its purpose tied to another master than the leaping fish and skating sunbeams. And I … I started to collect stories to fill my purse. To buy access past the next markers. To bribe the guards who now measured out my sunbeams and counted stories word for word. Payment due upfront, or I would be left stranded on that road I had never wished to travel.

It sounds an easy choice. To leave that road. To abandon what I never wanted and go back to unordered wilderness. Return to the carefree, haphazard hunt for sunbeams I would only ever borrow for a few heartbeats. To choose owning nothing and being beholden to no one. But the thing is … if I were to do that, what would stop the next toll road from carving convenience into the path of struggle?

The wilderness that births my stories would forever dwindle. My sunbeams would be vagabonds trying to make tarmac sparkle like a running stream. And my words would truly become nothing more than coins, determining where and how far I can go. I would become small and tame.

I do not accept that.
I will not live that life.

I will take my inspiration from the forests at Angkor Wat and Yaxchilan and grow. Grow beyond. Grow despite of. Grow until I – without ever abandoning my path – yet again find myself back in the wilderness. Where my stories and I play catch. And where the next step, the next adventure, costs nothing but the joy in sharing and a heart willing to leap like a fish in the stream.