Release the Arrow

There comes a point when something we have created can no longer remain only ours.

A poem.
A song.
A reflection.
A story.

We shape it as carefully as we can. We listen to it. We revise it. We sit with it long enough to know that it carries something true.

And then comes the harder part.

We have to let it go.

Perhaps writing is a little like drawing back a bow.

For a while, the arrow is still in our hands. We can adjust our aim. We can hesitate. We can wonder where it will land.

Will anyone understand it?

Will it matter?

Will it reach the person who needs it?

But we cannot hold the bowstring forever.

At some point, we have to release.

And once the arrow leaves us, its journey is no longer entirely ours.

A few words written today may reach someone months from now.

A song may find a listener on a night when they needed exactly those words.

A reflection may remind someone of something they had forgotten about themselves.

The writer may never know.

Perhaps that is part of what makes sharing our creations an act of trust.

We do not have to know every destination.

We do not have to witness every ripple.

We only have to make the offering as honestly as we can, then allow it to travel beyond us.

Maybe that is what I am learning now.

My task is not to decide where every piece of writing belongs in another person’s life.

My task is to write what asks to be written.

Then release the arrow.

And let it land where it needs to land.