The Funny Thing About Writing
The page isn't a loudspeaker; it's a mirror.
The Funny Thing About Writing
I started writing because I thought I had something to say.
I had all the answers, or at least, I had enough of them. I'd been through some things, learned some lessons, and figured the best way to prove that was to share what I know. My mission was simple: I'd take everything I'd bottled up inside and just… pour it out for everyone to see.
I thought I would finally be seen as a person with something to offer, a voice of authority. I imagined a reader, nodding along, saying, "Yes, that's it! That's exactly what I needed to hear."
But something strange started happening the more I wrote. The more I tried to organize my thoughts and present them as solid, finished ideas, the more I realized they weren't finished at all. The act of writing wasn't about putting a period at the end of a thought; it was about opening a question mark at the beginning of a new one.
I’d sit down to write about a topic I felt confident in, only to find myself exploring a related idea I'd never considered. I'd publish a piece I thought was about sharing wisdom, only to have a reader's comment reveal a blind spot I didn’t know I had.
I started writing to share what I know, but I'm realizing that I'm writing to discover what I don't know. The page isn't a loudspeaker; it's a mirror. It shows me the gaps in my thinking, the contradictions in my beliefs, and the questions I was too afraid to ask myself.
As Socrates said, "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
Funny how that works.