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Saturday, March 26, 2011

Overcoming Death!

I haven't written for awhile, and that is a story for another time.    I started this blog in order to put order to my thoughts and to at least in writing enter into an honest conversation, if with no one but myself, what was really going on in my head.   It has worked beyond what I would have expected, and not only that I also enjoy doing it.  I am a storyteller by nature, and any medium that allows me to share stories is one I know I will like.   I have always believed that we are just a collection of stories.   Good ones, bad ones, sad ones, happy ones, all the experiences that have made me who I am today....and it is in the sharing of them I can then let others know who I am.   I once had a spiritual director who put it this way "we are writing our own scriptures"....our stories are sacred!

If you think about this it is so true.  How many people love a good book, a good story.    We all love to watch movies, especially the ones that resonate with our own lives.   Maybe even the adventures we wish we could have but live vicariously through others.   We are a people of stories!... I love to tell stories, as anyone who knows me will attest to, but I also love to read stories, even more than watch them. I prefer my imagination and interpretation to an other's.  I am an avid reader and will try any book that is given to me.  I have grown in my choice of books to a place that if I decide I am not enjoying a book, or perhaps am not in a place at that time to read a specific book, I will stop and put it down.   Most times I will go back to it at a later date and try again, but I will make a decision that I dont' want to read a book once I have given it a fair shake.   Something I find many people don't do, they must finish a book.   Interesting, even a story that might not be of interest most at least want to know how it ends.   Sometimes, I just prefer to make up my own endings!!!!!   Now there is a point to my rambling......

Many, many people over the years have told me that I should write a book.   Of course, I humbly shake my head and say "what would I write about"....and of course people say your life, your journey with cancer and so on.   Well, I started this blog in some ways because of this, but also for myself.   As I have said many times it is very cathartic.   So, I am aware of how writing is important, and how words can be very powerful.   Well, I just read the most amazing passage in a book I am reading and I wanted to share it.....it really sets out how important writing is for all of us....to tell ours story no matter what it entails.

"People disappear when they die.  Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath.  Their flesh.  Eventually their bones.  All living memory of them ceases.  This is both dreadful and natural.  Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation.  For in the books they write they continue to exist.  We can rediscover them.  Their humour, their tone of voice, their moods.  Through the written word they can anger you and make you happy.  They can comfort you.  They can perplex you.  They can alter you.  All this, even though they are dead.  Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved.  It is a kind of magic."   (Diane Setterfied, The Thirteenth Tale)

So I will write, I will express my anger, humour, thoughts, feelings with these combination of characters that make up words....and then I too will have overcome that dreadful state of death!!!!!!!!!!

3 comments:

l'optimiste said...

fabulous - I think I'll just steal your post and do that too! ;)

Seriously though, I love the ethos behind this post - through the centuries, everything comes to us through stories...all our history etc. Good thought.

I also find the blogging VERY useful. Great for venting or just sharing - and making new friends :)

x

tamara said...

Love you...and still think you should write that book...

OSL said...

Thank you for that post.