The View From Here

I finally have identified an adversary of mine that has long kept me from a goal that I wish to obtain. I have wanted for the past few years to write stories. I have done outlines, written out ideas and developed characters but have never felt that I was ready to write the story. What I am finding is that I don’t feel qualified to write the story. I don’t have anything to base the kind of stories I want to write on. I want to write epics but I have never experienced anything epic in my life. I get up and go to work every day and follow a script. Granted, I work hard, but I don’t think I have ever striven for anything in the true sense of the word. I don’t even think that I even fully understand the full gravity of the word. My life does not require that. I have never pushed myself to the end of my limits to find what really makes up me. I have never experienced true suffering. In fact, the most “suffering” I have endured is probably being a little on the hungry side after not eating for most of a day. To come to the point, I don’t feel that I have experienced enough to have a true vantage point to write from. I don’t know exactly how to solve this problem but it would be a safe bet that I won’t strive to fix it because I don’t even know how to do that. I will work hard at it though.

This brings me to the second part of the title to this entry. When I read books and I come across phrases like “and smote his ruin on the mountaintop”, I am blown away by the intensity of language that presents itself. I love that. This ties into what I was talking about before. I have never had to smite anyone or anything. I don’t personally understand what it is like to smite something much less feel strongly enough about the thing that I smote to call it a ruin. I live my life at such a fast pace that I fail to take in so many of the beauties and horrors it offers. I am sure it is the same with most people. Give me my cut of time or money and let me go spend it on something to gratify and fulfill me. As a result many of the words in my language really mean nothing to me. Part of my language is dying because people do not have to define their lives by them anymore. There are very few people who truly struggle. There are many people who think they do but truth be told most of them are lazy and only “struggle” because they won’t put forth the effort. Instead we all wait for things to be handed to us and if it is not we complain that we have been wronged when we are only wronging ourselves by thinking that we are owed

something. As a consequence of this many of the words in our language are dying because there is no use for them. We have no need to describe our lives by them so they fall to disuse and blow away. I don’t think there is necessarily a “fix” for this but at the same time I do think it is sad to see the vividness of life ,and the way we describe it, pass away into drab insignificance.