Sometimes I write things that I don't post. I intend to at the time that I'm writing, but something just doesn't feel right, or I just get stuck and don't quite know how to continue, or I can't figure out what the heck the point is that I'm trying to make. It is interesting to look back at some of these unfinished writings and see how much I have changed over the years.
We don't always notice how much we have changed. We tend to believe our thinking is pretty static, but that just isn't true. I recently read a piece I started about seven years ago talking about food and what we should or shouldn't eat. I never posted it, and now as I look back, I am pretty bemused by it. Who am I to say what you should eat? I honestly don't know what each of us should eat. It's totally different for each of us.
It reminded me to look back on my Caring Bridge page from ten years ago when I went through cancer treatment the first time around, and I was a bit taken aback with how relentlessly chipper I was. I joked a lot and used a lot! of exclamation marks! As I look back at those posts now, I can see that I was desperately trying to make sure that nobody worried too much about me. My posts were meant to convince everyone, including myself, that I was strong and that everything was going to be just fine!
My writing now is a bit different - a bit more introspective. And so I found myself asking, why do I write anyway? Is it to get something off my chest? Is it to share information? Is it to impart some hard-won wisdom? I think it's a little of all of those things. I think we tend to teach best what we most need to learn ourselves. By writing, I am reinforcing for myself what I want to learn. I am reinforcing for myself what I believe. I am still convincing myself of things just as I did ten years ago. When you put words to paper, it changes things. It makes things more real. It makes you really stop and consider. It makes you sift through the swirling thoughts in your head to create order out of the chaos.
When you write something, you are putting it out into the world to possibly be made manifest. I think about how those words on the page create a reality. They create a feeling when I am writing them, and they create a feeling when you are reading them. This is pretty powerful stuff. Words create worlds. Do you know what the word "Abracadabra" means? It's actually an ancient Aramaic word that means" as I speak, so I create". That's real magic. The words we say create reality. The words we write are even more powerful because they are so much more permanent. They live on long after we write them, and they continue to impact people again and again.
And so I had to make a change on my blog page in the "About Me" section. I realized that written there, to be read over and over again, by me and everyone else, was a statement about my health where I identified myself as someone with stage IV cancer. This was how I presented my identity. It was one of the few things I said about myself. I ask you, how can I possibly change this about myself if I have it written down as part of how I define myself? How can I convince myself of any other possibilities if I have that staring at me anytime I see my blog page? And so it is gone. I have wiped it clear and now there are endless possibilities for how I choose to define myself. Now it reads that I am writing about the journey, not the destination. I am writing about seeking and finding beauty. I am writing to change my world into the place I want it to be.
How powerful is the written word? Life changing.
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