But I know now there’s one thing you’ve all overlooked: intelligence and education that hasn’t been tempered by human affection isn’t worth a damn…Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love.
– Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
People write for all sorts of reasons – to exorcise personal demons, to make a name for themselves, to live up to some expectation set by another, to set the world straight. Some of those reasons are the wrong reasons, and some of them simply have been deformed by the cares of this world or even caring for this world. What starts out as a right and good reason turns into arrogance and self-righteousness. What starts as something beautiful is crowded out and strangled by the worries of making ends meet.
The only thing that can keep the deformities and worries at bay is love. A love for the work itself and a love for the people who will read it. It is love that keeps a writer from becoming self-absorbed. It is love that keeps that writer attentive to the world even as that world batters her with its cruelty and depravity. It is that same love that gives hope to the writer, and it is a hope that sometimes is rewarded by observing a brief moment of beauty – someone sharing food with a homeless person; a family of quail crossing the road; the sun rising and setting the clouds ablaze with hues of gold and pink; that same sun transforming the person sleeping in bed, an arm flung in a gesture of carelessness; the moment before that person awakens and remembers the to-do list and the argument from the preceding night – and it sometimes is a hope that only remains alive in the words written on the page. It is Sam’s hope, the hope that “a new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.” It is the hope of one day finding that love accepted and returned.
It is love that keeps the writer writing even when it seems that the words will never be right or that no one will ever publish them or want to read them. That is why a writer writes. It is why a writer will keep writing no matter what – she is seeking love and ways to communicate it, and she will not rest as long as she is in search of and wishes to share it.
Image: Weng (CC BY NC SA 2.0)
[…] If you’re a perfectionist – if you live with the reality of perfectionism long enough – you’ll realize the only way to win against perfectionism is never to surrender to it. If you surrender to it, you’ll accomplish little, if anything, but, if you fight it every single day, you just might make something. No, it might not be anything good, grand, or perfect, but it will be something, and it could be the very something that someone else needs. […]