Recently I asked my students to freewrite for ten minutes (hey, they gotta do it too) on why they are thankful to be a writer. I didn’t go into it with expectations. I also didn’t expect to do it myself. But it is Friday, and on Friday we freewrite, so…
I am thankful for being a writer because it allows me to visit strange new worlds within my own mind. It allows me to meet and interact with people I otherwise would never know existed. It gives space and shape to the thoughts that fill my mind. It gives an outlet to the feelings that clutter my heart. It separates me from the darkness and the doldrums. I fear consumption. I fear it leaves you dead inside. It can be a wonderful thing if it is balanced by creation. Consumption is the yang and creation is the yin. In my mind and my heart they only work if they coexist, if you allow yourself to experience creation. If you allow yourself to remain a consumer alone your heart closes to the idea of creation and you become hardened against it; cold and cynical; an addict awaiting their next fix only to be disappointed when it doesn’t hit with the impact you long for and briefly pleased when it does.
Creation is understanding. It is a window into how things work and why people sometimes don’t work or work well together. It is allowing yourself to embrace what is possible and pushing yourself to create what you didn’t think was. Story is a connection to something greater. It may be done in isolation but it takes you out of isolation, which is really important for a person like me who is extremely isolated and surrounded by people who mostly are concerned with themselves and their expectations of me and what and who they want or need me to be either for them or around them or to them.
Writing is also longing. Writing is my way of deciding what I want –that thing just out of reach; that imagining of a life not lead. Writing is all of these things and it is more. I’m thankful for writing because of what it does and what it can do and how it makes me feel and how it blesses my life.