The Immortality of Words

I always try to seek the reason or the why of things; sometimes this tends to bring me problems and even anguish. On occasion, knowing about a matter beyond the superficial creates in you a kind of responsibility or burden which, once you have taken it on, makes you realize that it might perhaps have been possible to be happy in ignorance of it. Knowing too much can destroy you; ignoring too much turns out to be equally deadly. Balance is necessary — perhaps that is why we have the sense that those who ignore more appear to be happier than some wise men. What is the point of all this searching for the reason? Specifically because one day I set out to find the real reason why I write. Writing is an intellectual exercise I have practiced from an early age. Regardless of academic demands or of what a particular job may require, writing is something I in a certain way enjoy doing, and at every academic stage I have surrounded myself with teachers, authors, and content that have nourished my motivation, interest, and skills toward letters, even though it is not formally my field of study. I consider that, in general (although it may sometimes appear otherwise), I do not naturally possess the social skills that others carry. Being an Asperger's individual, I have perhaps had to make a somewhat greater effort to understand many social situations, to involve myself in them, and to deal with them. For that reason, the mastery of language has been transcendental for me, and now, with hindsight, I am glad to have devoted enough time to acquiring skills in language, both written and oral. I have heard the reasons why other people write; some find freedom in letters, others beauty. Once I heard a reason I liked: “writing is a way of psychoanalyzing oneself” — I had not seen it from that angle. When you write what you think, you in a certain sense converse with yourself, and at times you can arrive at deeper reflections than those you can reach without writing. When you think without writing, ideas escape; when you write, you have the opportunity to record them, analyze them, polish them, take them up again. In a certain way, letters acquire a life of their own, and interacting with that form of life becomes, for many of us, something interesting. For a relatively short time now I have practiced a free style of writing. It is true that rules have a valid reason to exist and also to be observed, but I have been troubled by the fact that important ideas may escape within the rigidity of the structure of a short story, an essay, an article, or a review. Writing is a simple act, and we may refrain from recording what could be interesting conclusions merely because we are not writing within a structure or with a defined objective. By relaxing the rules of written composition a little, I found the true reason why I write. In writing, I was not aiming to arrive at interesting conclusions, to address subjects skillfully, to share my opinions, to compose good essays, or to craft gripping chronicles. The reason why I write is bound to the immortality of words. Immortality, transcendence — everyone at some point feels the desire to overcome the barrier of time, to leave a legacy, or for certain things to remain the same for an indefinite time; but the behavior of the universe reminds us that change is the norm. Letters are different; they are above any other vessel, and they have the opportunity to transcend. Bearing in mind that we still read what primitive man depicted in the caves, we can say that it takes far more than thousands of years to destroy language and the act of writing as a form of immortality. Throughout our lives we hold dialogue with our ancestors — I say dialogue because, even though we cannot interact as we would with a person present, we will always obtain a large part of the answers we seek through the thoughts, ideas, and writings they left us. We keep telling the same stories, we keep in mind the events that once took place because someone wrote them down, and by being written they had the opportunity to transcend. A month ago, while going through some papers, I found an essay I wrote when I was 12 years old. When I read that piece, it was as if my 12-year-old self traveled through time and chatted with me; I could recall the dreams, fears, ideas, and beliefs I had at that moment. Compared with that time, my evolution has been radical, and after reading that essay I confirmed the immortality of those words, which transcended more than a decade and gave me the possibility of reuniting with my past self. I will end this piece with an invitation to write. Letters are life: give life to your stories, to your dreams, to your projects, to your thoughts; let your art and creativity transcend with the immortality of words. © Alejandro Guipe | All Rights Reserved.