If a Tree Falls...

The other day while I was cleaning out some desk drawers in my office, I made the mistake of opening up the drawer that I keep all my old journals in. I’ve kept a journal consistently since I was 11 years old, so I knew from the very moment that I saw the first journal, the spiral notebook with the psychedelic print on the front, that my cleaning adventures for the day were over. Sure enough, I sat on the floor of my office for the next four hours reading through the past 15 years of my life, laughing, crying, and cringing. I relived my first kiss, my first dance, my parents’ divorce, taking my brother to college, my first heartbreak, my first time really getting into trouble, my entire college experience…and I was reminded again of why I am so thankful for my mother who bought me that first journal so long ago. I got to sit in the middle of my office surrounded by my bills and papers for work, and watch myself develop into a person. Some of the stuff that I found I should probably burn because it’s so embarrassing (even for me) that I ever wrote it, but some of it I think I’m going to put on here because it was kind of refreshing to read.

In 12th grade I had to put together a portfolio for my Creative Writing class and one of the assignments was write an essay explaining why you write and how you’d grown as a writer throughout the semester. Here’s a little bit from mine. (It made me happy and sad to read it).

If a Tree Falls…

I don’t exactly consider myself a writer, but I guess I should. I am a person who writes, and who has written for as long as I can remember. But I guess I’ve never considered myself a “writer” because nobody really reads anything that I write (except you of course). It’s kind of like that whole, “if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it…etc. etc,” thing. However, that doesn’t really relate to the issue at hand. How have I grown as a writer? In the same way that I have grown as a person.

I think you go through a few distinct changes through your life, and the rest of the time are just gradual periods of change. Every morning when you wake up, you will never go to bed the same person you were twelve, thirteen, maybe sixteen hours earlier. You’ve had a new thought, met a new person, or just found out something new about the world you live in. Either way, something in your day has changed you, and for that reason you aren’t the same person anymore. If you are the same person completely, then maybe you should re-evaluate how genuine of a person you were in the first place. Or you should just sharpen your listening skills. [Please forgive my self-righteous 2nd person insertion…I was only 18].

….One morning I woke up and I realized the thing that makes me happy is when other people are happy. With so much separation in our world, common ground and connections can’t be ignored. And when I realized this, I realized that I had come up with an equation for life that worked for me. This has also become the basis of my writing….

My journals are filled with small, strange episodes that struck me as funny, or common. Things that you can’t avoid, like how people are always afraid to be the first person to turn in a test. They wait for that one brave soul to walk up first, and then a line quickly streams behind them of people who have been on the last question for 10 minutes, just waiting for someone to break the ice. I write down everything like that, that I experienced on a daily basis…

I realized that they are details that aren’t strange to anyone, and that almost everyone had experienced them. I had found common ground! If I wrote about these episodes, people might be able to relate and maybe, just maybe, they could see an episode from another perspective. Maybe, just maybe, that new perspective would open their minds to a chain reaction of new perspectives. Maybe, just maybe, that common ground would spread. That is, if anybody ever reads what I write, besides you….

At first I was challenged because I thought that in constantly seeking common ground, I would lose my identity. Of course, I soon realized that to be untrue. In order to look for connections and similarities in people, I had to be completely comfortable with myself, completely aware of my own individuality. It sounds very generic, but you have to love yourself before you can love others….

I feel like I’ve developed a humanistic and realistic voice over the past couple years when it comes to my writing. Most people who read some of my stuff usually say that they know exactly what I’m talking about, or have felt like that before. And that is the best compliment I could receive. I’ve never been a fan of writing fantasy, or writing about things that don’t and won’t ever happen to people….

I know I will continue to grow as a writer and as a person, and I’ll look back on this essay and realize how silly I was. Actually, I’m questioning it already. But tomorrow this essay won’t have the same relevance as it does today, and in three weeks it might be even less relevant. Because tomorrow and in three weeks I will be a little bit different…I won’t think the same, or write the same. I won’t be the same person. But my grammar will never be perfect, because I will always start sentences off with but or and, no matter how much I change. And that’s okay, because I’m sure you’ve done it before too, and that’s common ground.