I’m currently working my way through the poetry module of my Creative Writing course, and have been pleased to discover that it hasn’t been any near the painful process I had imagined it to be. I have always loved words, and lately, I have been drawn to quotations that stir and inspire me. Rather than try to express my own inadequate articulations, I’ve had a compulsion to share some of the words I’ve found that capture something of the human condition, as I’m sure many of of my Facebook friends would attest to.
“The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance.” ~ Oswald Chambers
One of my greatest dreams has been to someday be able to write in such a way that I no longer need to draw upon the words of others to say the things that my heart longs to say. Not that there is anything wrong with borrowing those words; Hallmark and American Greetings have built their empires upon our inability to transform elusive emotions into flowery prose. We wander the rows, meticulously inspecting card upon card until we finally discover the one that evokes a “Yes! That’s it!” reaction within us. We take it home, making it our own words by underlining words and phrases and adding our own brief closing sentiments, and hopefully give something our own selves away to a loved one in the process.
It is, though, only in the miracle of our hand upon pen, pen upon paper, ink flowing and dancing across the blank page, when our hearts break open and spill across the paper. Even in a day and age of e-mail and text messaging, the handwritten note or letter sent via ‘snail mail’ conveys much more than the digital equivalent.
Or so says the man typing madly away on his tablet pc, who hasn’t sent a handwritten letter in years…
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