Last night I started thinking about why people love the things they do. You know, why some people love writing, or singing or dancing or water polo, and what made them want to do these things to begin with? Is it a nurtured thing? A freak choice you just ran with? Or is it something you're supposed to be doing?
I can't speak for anyone but myself, but, I started writing when I was just a tiny little girl, and it's one of two things I've wanted with all my heart, with all my soul, more than anything else in the world. Actually, the whole idea, that I've wanted something so consistently for that long, kind of freaks me out--but it also plants a seed of wonder. Why? Why, why, why? I needed to know. So, I've been analyzing the whole thing (naturally), and I've come up with a few ideas.
1. When my brother and sister and I were kids (well, really, they're 17 and 22, so they still are--though they'd grumble at me for saying so), but when we were just youngins', our lives were wicked hard. A lot of things happened that were just plain not cool, and, as the oldest and the caretaker, I grew up too fast, with too many adult responsibilities, and the situation was directly conflicting with my actual personality--in other words, here was this dreamer, this artsy, head-in-the-clouds, passionate, romantic kid, who had to ignore her entire personality and all her dreams in order to survive some pretty crazy circumstances. So, writing was my direct escape. It was also my way to explore alternative thoughts when doing so was highly frowned upon in my household.
2. I've always been incredibly driven to share myself with people, probably because I heard "keep it to yourself" a lot as a kid... so I kind of flew the hell away from that notion the moment I realized that repression was not my friend. It's nobody's friend. Of course, it also took me about a decade and more than one instance of disillusionment to find balance with regards to wearing my heart too vulnerably on my sleeve. So, now my wish to know and love every. single. person. alive is pretty well still there, but I'm a little more realistic about the whole thing. It seems to me, that the ideal way to pull this off is to create something that would be big enough to reach a lot of people--thusly, books (or music). Because these things take your energy and your heart and they spread them out so that folks absorb them, and then voila! I've basically hugged everyone remotely.
Yeah, yeah. Make fun of me if you must. I know I'm a goofball. But it drives me nuts that there are people on this planet that I'll never know, especially when so many of you are so completely awesome!!
Right. Long and short of it is, I think I write to let my inner child out, and to connect with lots of people. (Plus, you know the hippie in me thoroughly believes that it was all supposed to happen that way, anyway.) Yes, I could have just given you the summary to begin with and saved you some reading, but I'm a writer--we like describing things.
Love (and some of those long-distance hugs),
Jen
1 comment:
Oh my god, did you know that you are just crazy adorable and certainly the Mega Best?
Because it's true! I for one am really pissed that hippies have somehow co-opted the whole, for lack of a better phrase, Enlightenment Thing and made it all dumb and too frou frou. Gr! I can be searching for enlightenment AND listening to The Humpty Dance (don't ask me why I am doing that right now, I just am...).
Which is one of the reasons I love Seers so much, because they are all so just real, regular people. Not all blissed out Castaneda types.
In short, Girlie, <3 I HUG YOU BACK! <3
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