It’s odd that I never gave it much thought. I remember when I was in the second grade, I gained a love of writing poetry. It gave me so much of a release. I felt free when I wrote, just the ability to get my thoughts out. I even remember one day writing something and not wanting it to rhyme. I just wanted reason. I even changed part of my pseudonym(yes...in the second grade I created a pseudonym) to fit what I had become, Free.
As I got older the writing bug never lost me. If anything it became more about finding out what I wanted out of life...connection.
The search led me to understand not only my emotions and feelings, but understanding those around me. My empathy gained with every passing year. I saw and felt the emotions of those around me. But as with all good things an end came. I was just far too overloaded with work, relationships, and just life in general. The muse was gone...
Then, I discovered a quiet place in my spirit. I learned to meditate and block out the noise and the voices in my head. A calm unlike anything I had ever known was upon me. Even though the journey was hard, I found an appreciation for it. The losses, the gains, and even the moments of stagnation no longer gave me an ebb and flow that caused extremes reactions. I finally had my center.
I had reached what a friend of mine called...flow.
But one day in the late nineties I wrote something that was on my mind for some time. I wrote what I saw in the world, not my world, but the world in its full capacity. I saw issues that even when studying history had occurred to me that nothing since this country’s inception has changed.It troubled me so that we as a species couldn’t overcome ourselves. Even in our greatest moments, we couldn't all come together just to set things right.
I wrote down suggestions or should I say solutions that I thought would help. It’s funny that now, over a decade later, I see more problems and more solutions. But one thing has held firm. We can’t fix this problem until we say it’s a problem and agree to work together.
In my writing I shied away from being direct, spoke with more of analogies and less direct. Then someone just pissed me off to no end, so I threw a punch. It felt so good!
Then I decided that my writing should have an honest approach and just putting what I saw out there in to the ether. The problems became easier to point out, but the solutions became so damn complex that I just stop talking in order to try to learn more. It’s a disappointing thing to listen to some of those that you admire or respected and hear talking points, ego, and self-aggrandizing. But it was so fulfilling to find others that were so knowledgeable, humble, and perceptive to take the place of those disappointments.
Yet the problems still exists. We can’t overcome ourselves. We don’t listen, we don’t care, we prefer to marginalize and dismiss a drive for excellence by saying no one is perfect. A sports team that wins a championship doesn’t have to be undefeated to be a champion, but we refuse the ring, by allowing the cheaters to destroy the game.
But, I just keep playing the game. I need to keep playing. There isn’t another game in town.
Life is all we have and on the day that the shiny new toys, the elusive moments of power over the weak, the need to be right even when everyone knows you are wrong, we might have a shot at living.
In turn I write for but one reason…that’s one of my ways to get into the game and hopefully come out with a group of friends on the same team…while we may lose from time to time…we can be champions. We can all be a part of the living. Not compartmentalized, cubicle assigned, labeled zombies…but living, loving, caring, and sharing individuals that just want to be…alive.
WHAT MORE IS THERE?
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