Words matter.
Writing is a lonely endeavor, but with a romantic air. The ability to sit alone with our thoughts is one of the most underrated activities we have available to us humans. For some, this is daunting—a looming of emotional bereft. Our thoughts get jumbled. Our words crossed. But there is a way through. When you dwell inside yourself and allow your thoughts to flow onto a piece of paper like a river cascading through the stones of a riverbed, you find who you are. You discover something about yourself and the world that you only sensed existed. You are becoming. You are living through your words. Allowing your thoughts to breathe all you have caged within.
Writing is hard. It is for me anyway. Words have meaning. Punctuation has meaning. The improbable perfection that is sought for in writing is what makes this work so brilliantly seductive and simultaneously painstaking. It is a great paradox: You find something you love only to realize how incredibly difficult it is. We get the feeling that once we find what we truly love, it will come easy to us. But this is life. It is through this type of pain that we find the best we have to give.
A writer writes because there is a truth she longs to hear. A story that doesn’t exist in a form she finds pleasing. I’ve had nights where I’ve woken out of a dream to grab my phone and type paragraph upon paragraph so I wouldn’t lose the thought that will disappear into a void if I don’t record it right then. You have no choice but to accept this. It is the path chosen. Otherwise, you find that these intricate, tiny thoughts will cease and you are left puzzled, "why, oh why, can I not remember the words that once pierced my mind?" This may sound dramatic, but it’s as if a trap door to your mind has been pulled, emptying out its contents.
I’ve spent hours trying to conjure up a broken thought that I chose not to record because I knew I would remember it at some later time, only to find that mystical presence will no longer return. It has been subconsciously wished away from existence. This is the art of noticing. Pausing to take in and ask yourself, "what is the meaning of this?" Without this simple act, we deny ourselves the pleasure of discovery. We deny our curiosities. Curiosity and discovery are the only things we have to fight away the demons of mind atrophy.
Our world is dangerous in this regard. Distraction reduces our attention to nothing more than a speck of dust. The working mind fills with an unquenchable sensation of wonder. Without the working mind, we can’t see life beyond the screen that sits in front of us; that screen will eat up our existence like a clock accelerating its way through time. We can attempt to turn back the clock, but it will always tick away until the end of our being.
If we start to think of time as a palette, it is imperative we find the right palette so we can paint the picture we want to see. By finding the right palette, we show meaning in existence. This palette will change over time, but what never changes is our need to use time in the best way we can. Otherwise, our being is decayed by the very seconds we waste.
Writing and researching are the closest things I have to pausing time. I start to appreciate my thoughts existing in a different realm than I am living. This realm is history. A history of being. A history of life. A history of those who have come before. And translating history into my own potential being. It is a form of peace; a painful peace of sorts. This peace flows into a rhythm and the rhythm becomes a vessel that carries our lifeblood. The moment I find this flow is the moment I realize there is nothing else I am meant to do on this earth. Words matter.
This post was in part inspired by a documentary about Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb. Caro is one of the great historian biographers, not just of our time, but in history. Gottlieb is one of the greatest editors in history with way too many major titles to list off here. This is one of the more phenomenal partnerships between writer and editor that exists and it’s been going now for 50+ years. The documentary is called Turn Every Page. I enjoyed it so much I watched it back-to-back days and I highly recommend it.
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So lovely and pure, I've felt so great to reading it. I was eager to read Turn Every Page.
Excellent post, man, which I have already saved and intend to read again, and to recommend to others.