How we write?

When I write I connect to a million-trillion moments that shape who I am.

When I write, I feel the letters forming into words, into sentences. I can feel each character as a symbol under my fingers. I am aware of these symbols; they are everywhere. If I look at an “a,” I do see it, and I feel a comfort in knowing this “a.” But like the parts of my body, I am mostly not attentive to this knowing. Instead, I am subconsciously entangled with this “a”; it is a part of me and like my body and all the parts of it, it becomes a part that services a utility that I rarely consider.

The act of writing exercises these parts, flexing like the muscles in our body. When we craft letters into words, into sentences, we are engaging with the fibres of language.

Sometimes it may hurt a little, flexing and finding fibrous knots and corners unknown, but the act and art of writing connect us to the interconnected and interlocked relationship we have with our natural language.

This connection is comforting, satisfying, reassuring, encouraging, supporting—and reminds us of our cultural belonging in our world.

As we become globally integrated and exposed to the colourful cultural languages that unite and connect people throughout our world, writing via our mother tongue helps to orient us through the wash of the rich cultural tapestry abundant on our planet.

Writing helps to reinforce our place as humans who enjoy symbols as tools. It creates more secure loops between absorption, utility and production. In other words, we absorb the world and its rhythms via our senses, we learn a complex series of symbols to represent, via language, that world and finally, we use that complex system through writing. This makes us desire to absorb and write more—the cycle continues.

The act and art of writing can happen in any language, and although we mostly use sight to perform this task, there are other modes of sensory communication, such as touch and sound, that also allow us to “write” our language.

And like the letter “a”—yes, it is there within our words—but over time it becomes part of a collective whole, imprinted and so entangled within our conscious self as a language-being that we are not aware of the letter, mostly, in our day-to-day world, just as we are mostly, day-to-day, not aware of the various muscles and skeletal elements that make up our body.

By writing, we pay attention to these parts. We nourish, stretch, flex, and activate these part of us. We keep these parts supple and young. And, we feel more alive because of it.

Active rather than passive consumers; we feel more powerful in our bodies as they are used and engaged through a deeply ingrained symbol system that has influenced our reality. By writing, we also have the means by which we influence ourselves.

Like our body, which we use and should nourish through food and natural, outdoor activities, maybe we should take the time to nourish the parts of our language that are embedded in our every waking moment—and also in our dreams. We can do this via the act and art of writing.

Until next time,

Mon xx