Thoughts Change, We Change, Writing Remains
It’s easier to write when no one is reading. It’s easier to do when no one is watching. It’s easier to speak when no one is listening. It’s easier live when no one is there to judge.
Writing blogs is one of those things where you just spit out words and clear your mind. Writing about what you’ve learnt or have yet to learn, what you’ve seen or some insight you’re desperate to share. There is no structure (at least, not officially), there are no rules, and often there might not be anyone reading. Some might skim over, some might delve into it but others won’t read it at all.
Writing has been a tool for centuries, thousands of them. Thanks to my good old friend, Google, I found out that the earliest form of writing appeared almost 5,500 years ago. We have been using it for storytelling, communication, documentation of events… We all engage in it at least once a day (if not a thousand times a day). Emailing for work, texting your friends, posting a tweet, taking notes, reports, blogs, novels, poems. It’s all around us. But writing is a vulnerable thing to do. Why is this?
Speaking, doing, living; all of these things are ephemeral. They are short-lived and easy to forget. We are continuously questioning our words and actions, because there is no clear way to document what has actually occurred (though film and photo is changing this phenomenon). Writing is, and for centuries has been, the most permanent method of proving someone’s actions. An embarrassing tweet you wrote when you were 15 will still be floating somewhere on the internet, the diary you wrote at the age of 9 portrays your childlike thoughts at that time, a text you sent to your ex last year, that one will last too.
Like I mentioned previously, we are nowadays more documented than we ever have been. And this allows for open-mindedness in sharing thoughts. But it also allows for cruelty, embarrassment and blame. Though we are lucky to have this tool, it can also become our downfall. Everything changing in the blink of an eye. So even though we might feel that we have to freedom to say or do whatever we desire, soon enough the realisation will hit that this is not the case.
I am happy to have this tool and to be able to share my thoughts to my 3 monthly readers. But I am also aware of the fact that I might delete this blog in a couple of years time, when my thoughts are slightly clearer and my actions aline with the new me. This blog documents who I am in this very moment, in this very second that I type the words onto this very page. It does not document who I will be 10 minutes from now. Or 20 minutes. Or a day. Or a year. When we write, we do so from the standpoint of who we are this very second. Even so, that if I’d written this blog a few hours ago, it might’ve looking completely different.
Writing shows vulnerability and momentary actions that can forever remain.
