A Love Letter to the Written Word

Stories connect us: all of us.

Photo by Resource Boy

During tough times or gleeful ones, when anger arises or tears begin to fall, my journal and pen sit waiting and ready for me. Words are a balm imbued with magic; they help heal my soul. To write is to release: release stress but also imagination. To put pen to paper or fingertips to keys is to settle into an internal reflection, an escape as much as an intentional presence of the self.

Writing is my companion when I have something to say but need to find the right words before they leave my lips. In writing, I can explore my darkest depths and my farthest imaginations.

I can hold infinity in the palm of my hand and make you see, in your mind’s eyes, a galaxy. I can paint the sky purple, a soft lilac shade, as rays of yellow light, like arrows, try their best to strike through the oncoming twilight. I can make you taste the saltiness of rainfall, make you smell that petrichor perfume that lingers even as the grey clouds begin to disperse, as the fog begins to lift. I can make you hear birdsong, a faraway chiming of voices so different from your own but nonetheless still beautiful. I can make all this true even if it is not in this very moment.

Words are memory. They are a record of the author’s emotions and a silent ask for the reader’s empathy. They carry a piece of a soul, a soul in all its impossible fragility. It is both breakable glass and sparkling diamond. Read with care.

Read carefully. Because words can be swift. Harsh. Cutting. They can be an avalanche. A blizzard of cold-swept cheeks and cracked lips. But words can also be strung together slowly, a river of eloquence flowing, one soft word into the next, each period rippling, an ellipsis like stones skipping across the water….

If words are memory, then stories are emotion. Writers carry their joy, their sadness, their desire in the letters of the words they write–both to release the emotion within themselves and to carry it forward over to you. To make you feel what they have felt. A transference of humanity without direct experience. For even in a make-believe world with ferocious dragons, you, too, know of the immobilizing fear the hero must overcome. Even you know of their bravery when they do.

The world needs writers. It needs stories written by as many human beings as possible, from as many backgrounds, cultures, and abilities as possible. Humanity is, finally, not in the business of burning books, of wiping out the so-called enemies. The world needs records of history written by both sides of a battle.

The world needs stories. For as long as there have been people, there have been stories. Passed down from one generation to the next. Books borrowed, shared amongst friends, bound so tightly together that the pages inside remain untouched by flame and by fire. Stories, centuries old, copied and printed for new eyes. I can learn about the tragic life of a general from 11th-century Scotland, written by a man from 17th-century England. I can read about housewives from the 50s and 60s igniting the second wave of feminism in the United States. I can discover the monster and its creation that invented an entirely new genre of fiction in 1818. A whole 180 years before I was born.

Life preserves itself in the words, the emotions, and the dreams we write down. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a thousand words is a careful, devoted attempt at capturing life’s enigmas. A human effort to convey love or betrayal, hope or fear. Poets have dedicated years of their lives to finding just the right words and putting them in just the right order to make you feel. To make you think.

Writing is a wonder. Reading is wonderful. Whether facts or fantasy each word we read, each word we write, is an ode to humanity. We are, all of us, trying to make sense of ourselves and of each other. And the fact that we–each day, each year, each century–continue to do this through the written word is a truly beautiful thing. A silent communication between strangers. An understanding between souls. One that overcomes any difference in time or person.

During tough times or gleeful ones, when anger arises or tears begin to fall, my journal and pen sit waiting and ready for me. And that is all I’ve ever needed. And that is all the world just might need to begin to heal.