If you wish to become an expert on the game of
hockey, you would familiarize yourself with the game, and if you wanted to master it, you would practice every single day until you
became proficient at it. Writing is different, because these steps of
logical self improvement don’t work. You
can examine the great literary works of history, but it doesn't guarantee that you'll be able to replicate their success.
The content has to be something original that comes from deep within yourself, but neither can it be so abstract that it alienates your audience.
Anyone can write anything at any given time, but it doesn’t
change the reality that it’s impossible to create something out of nothing. The
problem is that the more that you read the more likely you are to repeat the
ideas and structures that have become familiar to you. I could continue to
whine and complain, but it wouldn’t come anywhere close to matching the languid
soliloquies of our good friend Sydney Carton; so I might as well quit while I’m
ahead.
I’m currently reading the biography of Howard Hughes. The
telephone hadn’t been invented yet, so people communicated with each other via
telegram. It’s not hard to see how
easily the intended message could have been misinterpreted. The most humorous of these incidents that had unintentional
results are recorded in the book. - You
would think the advent of the telephone would have helped to minimize those
errors… but no, nearly 100 years later our preferred methods of communication
are limited to 100 characters of text or less.
My point isn’t so much that history is doomed to repeat
itself, but rather to illustrate our swiftness to dispose of reason and to
replace it with cacophonous revelries. We somehow think that we are more human
than our predecessors. Yet, we traffic children, harvest organs, and find
ourselves enslaved to many of the very same vices.
The term self-protectionism technically doesn’t exist, but I
think that perhaps it should. We isolate the outcasts of society, and prefer to
be indifferent, because it allows us to maintain our comfortable lifestyles. That’s
not to say that compassion isn’t being shown anymore, but I’m convinced that we have an obligation to do a better job of going out of our way when no one else will.
...
Proverbs 31:8 Open
your mouth for those who can’t speak for themselves. Defend the rights of the
afflicted and needy.
Romans 12:16 Get along with each other; don’t be stuck up.
Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.
One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody. - Mother Teresa
One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody. - Mother Teresa
