Writing and Life

For as long as I can remember, I have always liked the idea of writing.  When I was a young boy, I really thought I could write a book.  In fact, I was so taken by the idea that I pestered my mother to buy me a typewriter.  Truth be told, I did not need a typing machine, not even for school.  This was back when everything was hand written and our main source of knowledge came from books.  But I believed that having the right equipment would allow my creative thoughts to flow better.  And I tried putting fingers to keys, hoping to translate ideas into stories.  But it turned out to be harder than I imagined, especially with the pressures that a high school boy had to endure.  There were so many things fighting for my attention: school, homework, games, sports, television etc.  And the list went on.  It was just not possible to quieten down and write a story, although I tried.  I recall writing one about a dog fight involving fighter planes, but it never took off.  In the end, I mostly typed out the few poems I managed to eke out during my teenage years.   The crystallization of my feelings and emotions on those few pages of paper was precious to me and I still have them in my drawer somewhere.

I must say one of the main reasons I wanted to write was also because I was reading a lot then.  I was keenly aware of my language shortcoming as a youth.  My parents were not well educated and we mostly spoke Mandarin and Teochew (a Chinese dialect) at home.  I was in a run-of-the-mill high school and was getting nowhere.  I needed to brush up both my written and spoken English so that I could do better in school and carve out a future for myself.  This was why I read voraciously, especially issues of Reader’s Digest that I came across in school or elsewhere.  And strangely enough, my neighborhood barber had a ready supply too, possibly from his regular clients.  Slowly but surely, I graduated to novels and I discovered a world where ideas came alive.  For the first time in my life, I saw how writers could create a vivid reality in the stories they told.  While fictional in nature, the stories transported readers to where their feet cannot bring them.  More than that, it allowed for a stimulation and broadening of their minds.  I was so intrigued by this that I too wanted to create my own reality and have another person visit and tell me how it was like.  Wishful thinking to be sure, but who was to say I was not a potential writer.

The intervening years since then have diluted my enthusiasm for writing and for life.  I used to be a more passionate and humorous person according to my friends, especially the close ones I had in university.  But a failed marriage dented my sense of optimism and undermined my trust in love.  Of course, that was before I found true love, both in Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, and Ashlyn, my wife.        

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