Writing

I read something this weekend, in between writing something of my own, and it was so beautifully written that for a minute I considered quitting my own writing. Nothing I could create could possibly be so beautiful. It wasn’t necessarily driven by self-pity, I don’t think, it was just a surety that I am not capable of what that writer had been, that this stranger had somehow conveyed my own thoughts on a matter, articulated it in such a perfect way, as even I hadn’t been able to. 

We create because we have an intrinsic need to connect. To share a piece of ourselves, the way we view the world under the veiled protection of a character: This is how I see the world, the way I feel, my experiences, fears, dreams and hopes. Do you see it too? Do you feel what I feel?

But something is always lost between thought and words and something more between writing and reading. Imagine transferring a liquid from one container to another, then into another one from that and so on. Each time you transfer the liquid, you leave some residual behind, stuck to the container, and by the time you get to the tenth or the twentieth container, your liquid’s going to be considerably lighter. I think thoughts are similar, we always leave something behind, because it is the nature of transference. 

Which is why my writing always feels lacking to me. Incomplete. Ineffectual. Inefficient. 

On the heels of that initial thought though, another followed. This writer, who had caused such an enormous, fundamental shift in my thought, wouldn’t ever know how I felt in that moment. I could never possibly convey it. The distance between thought and words. 

And so I wonder, even though I wouldn’t ever know, if I had touched someone the same way as well. If perhaps, something I created, no matter how deficient in my own opinion, might have been exactly what someone needed to feel seen, heard and understood. Valued. 

Maybe that is why we create. To pay it forward.