For the Love of Words

Sometimes, I think of our goals in life much like a dark alley in the middle of the night. For some it might be just a shortcut, but for others it’s the path home. Either way you get scared easily. If you can avoid it, you will. Because looking into the darkness and not seeing the light at the other end is too terrifying. And maybe, despite being 90 percent sure, you’re just not willing to risk making it out.

So you don’t. And day after day you walk the long way home, avoiding the alley as if it didn’t exist. Just like, day after day, you avoid thoughts of the things you wish you were doing. The things you know you could be doing, should be doing. Or maybe you got stuck in that place somewhere between thinking of your goals constantly, and actually doing something about them. That is the worst place to be.

An accomplished goal brings with it the euphoria of success; the beauty of manifestation, and the fulfillment of finding purpose. An unaccomplished goal, on the other hand, is like a poison. The only cure, moving forward. We have to push towards our goals until the reality we see when we open our eyes matches the reality we see when we close them.
But it’s frightening. So you never try. And every time you bury the thought of what your life could be, what you could be, you feel a little bit more of that poison. You die a little bit more each time.

Every day you walk past that alley like you’re not strong enough. You think to yourself, I can’t possibly do this. What if I have to fight? The long way home is safe and familiar. It is… comfortable.

Many people will walk down that dark alley. But for the ones that don’t, I feel a sadness. The same cloud of desire hangs over all of us. And it blocks out most of our light. Some people can push on despite that looming cloud; others are simply consumed by it.

I am consumed by a desire for perfection in my writing. If it isn’t perfect, I stop. I have gotten pretty good at analyzing my own behavior, and still it is an anxiety I do not understand. As the years drag by, I fear my greatest regret in life will be that I did not write on paper all the things I wrote in my head.

These days I find it hard to pull together all the pieces of the story. They are like fragments that float around me, following me everywhere I go. Always in sight, but rarely in reach. And they haunt me, these pieces.

Is it writers block? I had an English teacher who refused to believe in such a liberty. There was a time when I agreed with him, but now, maybe not. Nothing is good enough and nothing makes sense. It’s just emotions and ideas and ramblings. It’s just me. Who cares? Who am I? I’m nobody. I mean, I’m somebody to a lot of people, but I’m nobody to even more. Are my ideas relevant? I’m afraid I have no point. Do I even need one?

So for the longest time I have searched for something to write about. And because I thought I had nothing, I sort of stopped writing. The truth is I have always had more than enough stories, I was just never sure where to begin. Honestly, I’m still not sure. But I’m going to write anyway. Some days I can feel the story of the stars in my bones; putting it down on paper is the only thing that seems to make the anxiety disappear.

So I will write, not only to silence my mind, but to feel everything more deeply.

This is my story. I encourage you to write your own. On whatever surface you have, with whatever instrument you choose. Pick a moment in time and expand on it until you feel you’ve understood it well enough to connect it with the other moments in your life. Don’t stop connecting those moments, ever. And every day ask yourself: are you moving forward?

Are you not making art because you’re depressed, or are you depressed because you’re not making art?

For the love of words (or whatever your craft may be), keep moving forward, and keep making art.