The light that we carry

Today I was thinking about what writing means to me. I vividly recall the first time I entered a library as a child, it was equivilent to walking into an eye-popping candy store—the books were glistening and seductive. The very act of reading always felt like breathing—automatic and effortlessly relieving. I still feel the same.

Fast forward to now. I have had my book published and I've written for international publications, all whilst maintaining a fulfilling career as a content writer within the financial sector. Writing and reading still mean the same to me as they did when I was much younger. Back then, I routinely lost myself in literature. I never ever left home without a notebook and pen in my bag. At one point in my life, I had to actively wean myself off books because I found myself spending more time tucked away in some lightly-dimmed cafe in London reading on the weekends than I would be out socialising, like most people my age.

This is what writing and reading has meant to me. It is the light that I carry. Words are my anchor and to read is to be enriched—I have found that books are the greatest form of illumination of anothers experience, while the sheer act of reading in solitude enables one to digest information at one's own pace. Insights pop up like notifications in the brain. New ideas intersect with old ideas to form fresh patterns of thought. The peices that form the puzzle of life slowly and gradually come together the more I read.

Anne Lammott encapsulates it so well:

"Writing and reading deepen and widen our sense of life. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and the spirits of the people who are together on the ship".

From poets to scientists to historians, I value and admire all habitual writers because I know, myself, what it means to dedicate one's life to the written word and to, in turn, be nourished and satiated by it. There's no other feeling like it and in many ways, it is a calling. Yet the passage of entry into becoming a writer comes with its own set of baggage, as the poet Charles Bukowski often wrote about.

"If it doesn't come bursting out of you

in spite of everything,

don't do it.

unless it comes unasked out of your

heart and your mind and your mouth

and your gut,

don't do it.

if you have to sit for hours

staring at your computer screen

or hunched over your

typewriter

searching for words,

don't do it.

if you're doing it for money or

fame,

don't do it.

if you have to sit there and

rewrite it again and again,

don't do it.

if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,

don't do it.

when it is truly time,

and if you have been chosen,

it will do it by

itself and it will keep on doing it

until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was".

When I sit beside the lake of memory and take mental visits to experiences in my past, it was always the times when I wasn't writing that I was the least happiest.

Perhaps in the same way that a dancer uses the act of dancing as a barometer to measure internal well-being, for example, on days when dancing doesn't come naturally or one's body presents a sort of stiffness that prevents the flow of movement—the dancer knows that he or she is not doing so great. I know how I am feeling and doing overall based on how frequently and how well I write—it is my barometer for internal well-being and gateway into myself for I know this to be oh so true: "A non-writing writer is a monster courting instanity" (Franz Kafka).

We all carry light that we emit out into the world. Our chosen craft is most often a reflection of this internal light and radiance. It is why I always tell people: "I don't write, I am a writer". Your lifelong passion ought to be an extension of you, but it is never seperate from you. You are the light that you carry.