Use Your Words

I stopped writing. Full stop. Not writing writing — real writing. But guess what? I realized that if I continue trying to figure out why I stopped, I’ll never write again. Instead, I will just write. Hopefully I’ll remember why I started writing in the first place.

Actually, I just remembered.

It may not be the only reason, but I think I might have started writing to prove something to myself. To overcome the voices inside me that told me I couldn't. Not now. Not all through my childhood. Not Ever.

Hmm.

As I am writing this at 3:10 AM on a cold January whatever its called at three AM; (maybe the Yiddish saying Nisht ahin unn nisht aher — neither here nor there, captures this best )— sitting downstairs in the coziest corner of my life, in front of my fireplace, sipping some hot coffee; I am recalling something else about writing. Its about the Experience. The joy. The pure Joy of writing. The feeling I get when my initial reluctance, the ways I “test the waters” while wading halfheartedly into the personal sea of my words — gives way to the pure trust of plunging in, letting go — authorizing the waves to carry me, then letting go to just float there. Just being there. Words take on coherence at the intersection of past and present. In that parallel universe, the alchemy of memory — and this very moment; conspire to become this “experience.”

Sometimes in life, when trapped in the melancholy that lives in the “Nisht ahin un Nisht aher” impasse betweeen an existential sunset and sunrise — we need to say these words to the child within — the one that never grows up and never moves out — “USE YOUR WORDS!”

Much Love

Rabbi Yossi