I Want to WRITE

When I was 12 years old, I started writing a book. By that I mean I wrote a few sentences and knew what I wanted to write about.  I may not have gone past 2 pages but I wish I kept that manuscript so I could read about me at that time.

I remember the topic was about a youngster understanding the young. Or maybe a guidebook for parents to understand all the drama of a pre-teen.  I may be all practical (it seems) now but back in the day I was quite a drama queen (maybe still am) .  I had journals long before they were deemed therapeutic.  While washing the dishes I would quip some wise sayings and words of wisdom I wish to write and compile into a book someday.  That , obviously, did not happen.  I was always reserving to do it when I am older, wiser...

Looking back I think I was no wiser now than then.  I may even say I may have been wiser when I was younger.

Back then I was not afraid to write BIG because I never experienced being small.  Back then, I did not think what I could do badly because I never felt weak.  My resolve to do things were so strong I would often stay up late at night because my mind kept spinning with ideas.  I was bolder, brighter, I used to dream.

Nowadays, after spending a few hours on late night t.v., I wake up tired.  It takes a holiday, a new place, a few thousands in money to make me feel excited.  I am not complaining. Being able to do that is a gift in itself.  But back in simpler days, there was no need for that.

Maybe because I thought a wiser, more perfect me is going to emerge one day that I fail to see the special me right now.  I am still becoming am I not?  What do I want to become today?

I wish to be  a bit bolder.  I wish to be able to dream again.  Time I have  may now  be shorter but only because the time is NOW.  I think I have all that I was waiting for, more or less.

I am now 38. It has been 26 years since I attempted to write a book.  What should I write about now?

Life is a gift that goes through an endless cycle of wrapping and unwrapping with lessons.  You think you know it all then you realize that you know nothing.

You think you know love when you were 16 and find out you know nothing about it at 40.

You think you know how to be a parent at 12 and realize you don't know half of it when called to be a mother or an aunt.

Life is all figured out at 20. Until the reality of sickness, death, old age, mortality greet you.

Being successful is important until you realize how malleable success is. You bet on riches only to find that you were gambling with truth and peace as tokens.  One is baffled by the learning and unlearning that life give us an opportunity to experience.

We are never made.  We are always becoming.

I am becoming a writer. Maybe not on paper. Maybe my book is scribbled by the life I live.  In my head, thousands of words and metaphors connect each and every moment, every event, every problem, every joy, every person to each other.

Someday my life will be read, judged, sized up. It will be interpreted by many "wise" people who knew it all. But then they really don't.