Tuesday Morning Musings
If you’ve heard the phrase “The pen is mightier than the sword,” (from Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s historical play Cardinal Richelieu), then you know that words and thought are the most powerful tools we have. They can influence and challenge everything we think we know. They can tear apart beliefs or impart them, capture and define culture (both its good and evil), instill hope or, unfortunately, take it away in an instant. So, I want to know: what dreams and beliefs do you have that can be attributed to books, or even movies? What ideas from reading have manifested themselves into the hopes you have in life?
These can be, really, anything. Are you a hopeless romantic whose goal is to have a wedding that looks just like the one in your favorite novel — hanging lights, mossy trees and all? Was it the seemingly unimportant professor in a book that made you want to become a teacher? Maybe a line from Pride and Prejudice made you swear to never pass hard judgments, and to study yourself before claiming to know another person.
For me, after reading both Tess of the d’Urbervilles and A Prayer for Owen Meany, I learned about how you can have a strong faith without having a strong religion. Both novels changed my perception of the world and of life, which really is just this “thing” we all do that may or may not have a guiding hand. It’s how we play along that makes it good or bad, how we conduct ourselves and who we choose to have around us, regardless of what awaits us afterwards. But that’s just me (and John Irving, perhaps).
Even movies can alter your beliefs and dreams. And they don’t have to be spectacular, groundbreaking films or even renowned classics. They just have to resonate with you.
After seeing Peter Pan, I wanted nothing more than to spend Christmas in London. I have a dream of walking through snow-blanketed, cobblestone streets lined with old-fashioned lamp posts and a Newfoundland at the window of one of the houses. Alright, so not everything is terribly realistic, but it’s not impossible either.
The point is, words, movies, literature, poems, quotes, accounts of the past, tall tales, legends, thoughts, these seemingly trivial things that capture culture, are an influential part of what makes us who we are. It is even more notable that these influences, in a way, are nothing but the act of peering into the head of someone else that is, or once was, here. It’s nothing but the light of another voice, whether it be their deathbed final sentence or their Tuesday morning musing.
So, I want to see what your voice has to say today. You never know when it will be something that changes another person.
“Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination, and of the heart.” ― Salman Rushdie
