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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