Write on...

Since way back when, as long as I can remember, I’ve always been a writer.  I don’t really ever recall thinking I want to be  a writer.  It’s just something I innately knew and actually did.  As I think back, it was not so much of a calling as a listening. I intuited, I listened and then described the ideas and thoughts with words which then were arranged into sentences and other vehicles of penned (yes back then we used pens or pencils) expression. Sometimes it was styled as poetry; other times prose. It struck me that this was prosetry. 

At this time I wasn't even writing to amuse or impart wisdom. I was just playing; this was wordplay. As I grew older it became word working. Then I would add my own not very kind words, “I’m not a good enough writer,” “I don’t know enough to publish a book.” “I don’t have enough life experience to give what I write value.” I am now listening to the poisonous self-criticism that stopped me from being/doing many things because it came with an “I’m not good enough,” clause. 

As sure as I was of being a writer, I also was sure I didn’t want to be a teacher. Teaching was the profession and, for some, a vocation of many of my relatives.  For whatever reason, I did not want to follow in that track.  Maybe my not good enough voice was sabotaging what I really was good enough at, teaching. 

I laugh at this other me, this younger naive me, I laugh with compassion, from a wiser me who knows that all steps on the journey have brought me to the perfect place, exactly where I am. I know now that writing is teaching. 

I think/feel perhaps I may catch this trick of light that we call life, just out of the corner of my eye. But the moment I turn to focus on it, that’s not what it is at all. It’s far greater, far more mysterious, far more wonderful then I could ever word. And that is good enough for me.