Do you ever finally get out of bed after
staying up all night to finish a book, or after you read a poem
that faultlessly describes the way you feel about life, and you
just sit around in a daze not feeling anything? You just feel
empty, or maybe you do feel something, some sort of heart ache
that makes you feel less than yourself?
It’s all because this piece of writing was so beautiful,
and using the limited English vocabulary, this person had
picked out the perfect words to write this piece, and it
describes exactly how you think, and you read it at the perfect
time of your life?
Do you feel sad because you know that here’s this person
that can write so much more smoothly than you do, and they
could be more intelligent than you to write this piece? Like,
you just think, “Wow, why did I not think of writing this
myself? It fits in how I feel, like a puzzle piece, and I could
have written something this beautiful, so why didn’t
I?” Although you also might feel happy, like less of an
alien for thinking and feeling such things. Maybe you’re
feeling some way, and you assume that no one else will know
what you’re going through, and finally you find this
piece of writing by a person long gone, or if not, a person you
will never meet, and they don’t know about you, they know
nothing of you, yet they’re writing a piece and it makes
you feel like less of a stranger? Do you read this piece of
writing, and it feels like there’s someone holding your
hand throughout this period of life you’re going through,
and it becomes your favorite piece of art ever?
Shouldn’t you feel empty, though? Because you know
you’re going to grow up one day, and you’re going
to be sitting in your apartment at your desk, writing, and
there will be nothing left to write about? You aspire to be a
writer, the sort that people would read you work, and feel as
if you’re holding their hand, but can’t because all
the best things to write about have already been written about?
In such a way that your mediocre writing could never compare
to, all because this person was so smart and so in touch with
how they feel, that they had the idea to write this beautiful
piece of work before you did? And you know that one day
you’re going to grow up, and just be another person
sitting at a desk in a lamp-lit room, feeling as if
you’ll never be more than you are right now?
Maybe it’s not even the subject of which this person
chose to write about, but it’s how they wrote it. Even if
you don’t feel or think this way, this author has written
this piece in such a way that you feel even yourself is going
through the same thing? When you finish, you just wonder why
you can’t write that way. Why can’t I sound so
amazing when I write? Compared to this person, my writing is so
amateur. Anyone could write the way that I do, even though I
have tried all my life to get onto this level of writing, that
it still will just never be good enough? Why don’t I
choose words like that to write a poem with? Beautiful, soft
words that just flow off of the paper and into my soul and it
makes me feel a way I wasn’t feeling in the beginning?
Even if this person didn’t use such words that make you
think, even if they just wrote in a way that it’s like
you’re just speaking and not thinking before you speak, a
comfortable type of speaking, how could they do it in such a
way that their writing just still feels so special?
They’re not writing with the best of their ability, yet
it seems to be on of their best works. How do they do it?
All in all, at the end of reading any book, or any poem, or
any quote, or anything, you just end up feeling different? You
feel so small, because you know no matter what you ever write,
it will never amount to being such a great piece of work as
this one is, and you will never forget the way it made you feel
while writing it? You feel so great, because you feel less cut
off from every one else, because here is a person that feels
the way you do, and there must be so many other people around
the globe reading this same piece of work, and feeling the same
exact why that I’m feeling, and that no matter what way I
feel, there’s going to be someone who feels the same?
And in the end you can never choose which feeling you like
more, and you just sit somewhere feeling so many feelings at
once that you just stop feeling anything at all? And you just
sit, spending so many moments of you life, trying to figure how
you feel, when in the end you know you always choose to just
not feel at all?