“Some writings will ultimately end up in king’s palaces, as well as the prisons and rescue missions of the earth, for kings sit in both places.” Author Unknown
I recall reading these words many months ago but I didn’t make note of who wrote them. The truth of these words however made me take notice. Just look at the literature we have throughout history. Many of the greatest books ever written were never written to be books at all but simply expressed feelings someone happened to write down.
I can relate to this myself. Just as a painter needs to paint or a musician must play, I am destined to write. Our ultimate goal is one of expression and it cannot be contained. I suspect those who are unable to express themselves often feel like exploding and if a healthy outlet is not found, often they implode in a sense of failure they can’t even define.
Expression of self is found throughout history but for brevity’s sake I will only mention a couple of examples. “The Diary of Anne Frank”, the correspondence letters of our founding fathers of the United States, and much more intriguing are letters from ancient history such as the King of Persia.
None of these persons set out to write “the novel” but were simply living their lives and expressed themselves with words. Perhaps they inwardly wanted to have others read their thoughts in hopes to share something special but in all of these examples it was not possible to mass produce books. I find it telling that they wrote anyway. Without knowledge that one day their words would be read by generations throughout the world and beyond that, their expression would change how some of us think.
An interesting thought for us is this; with the internet we don’t know who may be reading our words. I can be impulsive and spew forth whatever comes into my little brain, but a statistic I heard recently stated we can have as many as 50,000 of those in a day so how do I choose which of those to express? All you have to do is surf for a minute or two to see plenty of that going on via “Myspace” pages.
Let us instead use history to teach us something important. Long after the end of ourselves in this reality, perhaps what we write will be read by others without our fore knowledge. It makes one wonder if they would write something more important than “I just read about who my favorite rock star is dating….”?
What would you write knowing you were to be read before a king?
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