Years ago when kids my age wanted to be cool, be a rock star, or an Olympian, an astronaut, or even just save the world, I wanted an additional ability - to write.
Many moons have passed by since then. Many of my starry dreams has been lost but somehow the slow ember of wanting to write has remained.
Like many of us I read voraciously everything I could lay my hands on, from Homer to O Henry, from Shakespeare to Steinbeck, I have walked the sled dogs with Jack London, picked oranges in Salinas, lived in old English Victorian houses with Jane Austen characters, I have starved with Oliver Twist, smoked pipe with Sherlock Holmes and felt the chill in my spine at nights on Daphne du Maurier's Cornish moors.
I lived and breathed with the characters, I was a musketeer, I rang the bells of Notre Dame, rioted in the streets of Paris, marched with Cromwell and sailed the seas with Walter Raleigh, I have exchanged beads with native American Indians, been burnt at the stake in Salem, felt the angst with Dostoevsky, walked the plank on Long John Silver's boat, lived on the island with Robinson Crusoe, jubilated at the fall of Sauron, wept at the death of Caesar and exulted while marching under Arc de triomphe, saw the rise and fall of the Roman empire, and was horrified at the cruelty of man while seeing the katana being used at Nanking or while hiding with Anne Frank.
In a way all those masterpieces were both my salvation and demise, no doubt I have been blessed to be able to read such works but gradually also realized I need a lot more talent, skill and discipline to be able to attempt to write like these maestros.
Everything I write becomes a hack’s work. When I sketch a character, Somerset Maugham shows through. When my character rides a horse I know Lochinvar has ridden better. When I write about something as prosaic as the weather, I see Melville’s stormy seas, and it has never bought out the misery of Jack London's cold merciless Northwest.
Now though a realization came to me. It’s not a competition. We should write to express ourselves. We learn a thousand fold more by externalizing and then by introspecting on the response. There is a great joy in being “able to speak your mind” and that brings me to the title of this post and René Descartes "Cogito, ergo sum" - I think, therefore I am.
This saying has been a cornerstone of philosophy and I agree that our very existence is dependent on our ability to think and reflect. To paraphrase Descartes "I am thinking, therefore I exist", but thinking without sharing is useless, it’s akin to the tree falling in the forest. As Herman Melville said, "We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads."
So I have started this blog. I will write what I think and maybe that will make someone else think. If I can make even one person think then I have made that person exist. What Man can ask for more.
