This Is Me
‘Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder’
This is my favourite quote, I don’t know who said it or created it but I can tell you it probably wasn’t Shakespeare or Jane Austen. I’ve always admired those who can write earth shattering literature, I’ve read several a novel when on that final triumphant close of the book I’ve sighed and contemplated my own life. In my mind I’ve always wanted to create the same cataclysmic feeling with my own writing, the truth is I probably won’t write an article, novel or singular sentence that has anywhere near the amount of gravitas as anything I’ve ever read. That’s why today I’m making a promise to you, I promise that my writing won’t be a complete bore and that some of you may finish reading it and mutter to yourself a simple ‘oh’ but I’m not promising that what you read here today will change your life, in truth it hasn’t changed mine either. It’s just me sitting here wrapped in my blanket thinking, if I could write something today that someone may remember 2 minutes after reading it then I haven’t completely wasted my time.
Words. They’re pretty simple really, you can string them along and create sentences or lyrics. But it’s amazing how when these little words are arranged in such a way they can reach into your soul. Words can make you cry, good or bad. Words can make you angry. Words can make you reflect. And words can create something beautifully devastating. In ways that’s why I love the quote, if we raise our words to levels we never dreamt of then we can create something beautiful and something purely artistic. To influence someone’s day with simple words is quite an achievement.
There are a lot of words in my head…they float around and commentate my day. Sometimes I let the words get creative and end up imagining a multitude of scenarios. This morning for example, I was playing through meeting old friends in 10 years time when obviously I’ve become sensational in every possible way. Quite the storyline to be envisioning at 6:30am on the way to work! I often formulate mini speeches in my mind, what I would say to an ex-lover, my parents or a new friend. As a race, we rarely say what we’re thinking, especially in the moment. Words don’t always come to me naturally when I’m speaking, an hour later I’ve perfected the most imaginative reply possible but at the time my mental pizzazz doesn’t always back me up. For instance, over the Christmas break things went anything but smoothly at home, my dad being the culprit of extensive upset. Now don’t get me wrong, as far as childhoods go I’ve been rather lucky. I know my mum loves me, I think my dad loves me and I have absolutely wonderful siblings. That doesn’t mean I necessarily agree with their believes and the way they view the world, my dad especially. So, this Christmas there was an event at home which stemmed into me and mum being completely disregarded by dad for nearly a week, he refused to talk to anyone and finally this erupted when he roared into a spat of abuse, aimed at me. As you can probably gather given my admission that I am abysmal at articulating my thoughts I ran away and cried. I wish my words hadn’t have failed me so, I wish that instead of running away I could have replied with grace and with total austerity in my voice. Thunder didn’t try and grow the flowers but neither did rain in this case.
As I come to the end of this article I realise I’ve basically put the words floating around in my head onto paper. As random as the words are, they’re me. This is me. The world inside my brain is me. Most people only get to see the part of me I articulate, that’s only the half of it.
So, as I said, I doubt this piece of writing has had an instrumental effect on you. I don’t expect you to be changing your life because of the words I have written. I want you to know that talking to yourself is not weird and you’re not going crazy for doing that. Most importantly I want you to know that with words you have unrestricted capabilities, use words to your advantage and create poetic literature, resounding speeches and thought-provoking quotes. Without a thought-provoking quote I wouldn’t have just sat and written my very first article. Make words your own and believe in your potential to create art.
Raise your words, not your voice. Remember, it is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.
