I always fancied being a writer. The gritty, n’er do well type that smokes countless substances, drinks with the resolve and the frequency of a Wall Street hooker, and bangs more people than, well, someone who bangs a lot of people.
I relish the thought of using big words and quoting famous works and just having a literary mind. I thought I wanted to write so that I could entertain and inform – a pithy and gloriously punctuated tome that would bring people of all walks of life to their knees with laughter and deep thought. I wanted to write words that would give rare and important insight into what bothers and works against the every day person, the common man amongst us who is just trying to get a break. Somehow, I wanted to help them and our ilk to make the world a better place through writing. Writing. Not scientific disease research, but writing. As I say it, I throw up a little.
Writing…. Barfing my opinion for others to lap up hungrily while they feast on my witty and brilliant perceptions on life. Ramming my perspective down the throats of the unsuspecting, in a Freudian need to be heard and recognized. The word processing version of a desperate cry for help from a hurting, insignificant speck taking up space on the earths surface for an unimportant split second in the timeline. In a ridiculous heightened sense of self, I write thinking that I can somehow change, inform, acknowledge, cajole, tease, strengthen, ridicule or educate a reader into being someone or something that here to for they were not previously.
I don’t have the experience that so many respected and verbose writers out there who I love to read. I would love to be able to write the flowery prose of a literary critic, or the hard hitting facts of Rachel Maddow’s staff, or the sustaining words of a Joel Osteen with the Bible as my source for references. Come on. The Bible.
But I don’t.
But writing is also the noblest of professions when one is called to do it. What of the Thomas Jeffersons, the Gahndis, the Shakespeares, the Tolstoys, the Ayn Rands, the Chuck Lorres. I’m sure there are a limited few that I’ve missed, but you can fill those in yourself.
So noble. And yet, so self centered. So important, and so tedious. So treasured, and so pitiful.
Who among us isn’t faced every day with this said same dichotomy? Who hasn’t looked at something or someone in their life and come to a cross roads of the ridiculous. Every moment in our life shares the sublime and the hated. And in those moments, every moment, we have choice – the choice to examine our perspective and look at what it makes us. Even when we don’t feel that we have a choice, we often do. Granted, there are somethings that happen that are out of our control, and they are the Universe’s way. No good or bad. They just are. And there is nothing that we can do about them. We can just choose to take the next step. A small step.
What is it that you want to do? Is there a profession that you’re not exploring? Is there a way of augmenting your life for the better that you’re not participating in because of time or other commitments? Is there an emotion that you haven’t felt in a long time?
Sublime or ridiculous. It’s never going to be “right.” But it will be “right for you.” There will never be enough money. There will never be the perfect time, or perfect relationship, or perfect job, or perfect circumstance for your greatest self to shine through. It’s in our little, single steps that we get to create the “right.”
If there was ever a time in history where I would ask you to be a Guerilla Optimist, that is, to be someone who is an optimistic dreamer in the face of adversity and unrest, now is the time. We can worry that we’re “not,” or we can know that we “will be, someday.” Perhaps sooner than we think.
A writer? Maybe I’m not. The purveyor of bright insight and hopeful prose? Not likely. The voice of reason and comfort in a world of upheaval and pain. I’m crap.
But do I want someone to feel better or challenged? Do I want to provoke thought? Do I want to believe in someone that might not have a belief in themselves right now and write it so that they may hear it? Yeah. I do.
I’m not going to write the next great literary masterpiece that will decorate the shelves of the literati. But I’m compelled to write – not something to stir, or insite – but maybe something to encourage. Something to comfort. Something to make you laugh.
Do something out there to spread your goodness around. Do the good that you hope to experience in the world from other people and peoples. No matter what you do, just do. (thanks Ebony Joann, for that last bit.)
That’s what I’d do.
L
