Grafting Redemption

Each one of us, in unique & challenging fashions, struggles to develop through adversity. Social circumstance, neurosis, inherited compulsion & existential penchant combine in morphic conjunction to serve as obstacles along a path to self-actualization. This is the harsh realism to experience & we are, each one of us, expected to not only identify any & all vexing conditions which arrest this growth, but to then engineer strategies to overcome & triumph.

How is it possible for conflict assembled through the guile of imagination, to serve not only as inspiration, but in rare & elevated instances, a road map to redemption?  The attentive reader is seduced by the familiarity of fictional adversity & at it's most impactful, writing permits a breadth of adaptability in offering unique avenues of identification, within the imaginary landscape.

The writer in search of profound, adaptable modes of conflict will find themselves attracted to observing disappointment, frustration or desperation. It is the violence of these struggles which are spread apart for the page, then re-assembled into the verisimilitude of our characters' experience. How these challenges arrive & in particular, how they are mastered, forms the emotional landscape of believable characters within the arch of the narrative. It is their adversity which serves as the adhesive which then bonds the reader’s empathic imagination to that of the writer’s. Struggle is endemic to human experience & by artfully portraying unique-yet-recognizable conflict within the body of our writing, we develop the emotional base of our work.

That which frightens, then threatens to destroy through fear, is the malice which the progressive identity strives to defeat; we read for insight & fresh approach in this battle.

Adversity is overcome by a unique combination of luck, care, patience, courage & wisdom— qualities which bloom mysteriously by a force of will to activate. As writers, we are required to observe—either those of our own or the struggles of those who inhabit our environments. Ideally, we glean insight into how these ennobling characteristics can be summoned or coaxed to rescue those rent incapable by suffering. There is strength & valour everywhere.

It is these unique, heartbreaking battles through the adversity of existence which enables us to identify with others. Each of us is required to overcome in order to meet basic needs. Compelling writing envelopes the reader in the well-observed particulars of these struggles. When artfully composed, literature serve to both motivate & enlighten. We are absorbed by the mechanics of familiar experience, which forge terms of personal resolution; we solve our own conflicts by proxy.

{Artwork by Ruben Cukier}