What if I Were a Writer?

What if I were a writer? What would I say to the world, to my own journal, my mirror, telling my eyes what my soul is thinking?

I might write about what it is like to dig deep. I’d tell of times when digging deep did not lead to winning; not exactly losing, but also not arriving.

Perhaps I would write about runs. The sloppy runs, where I grunted through mud and hardly made gains, where I breathed heavier than an asthmatic freight train, hardly faster than a limping elephant.

Then, I could tell of the glories of running farther and swifter than I ever thought possible. Of dancing across streams, along miles of trails, that paralleled rivers and took me to what felt like the end of the earth—How my legs and lungs have such potential, it astounds me.

Miles trudged lead to miles of bliss. Like when I lose myself beside the tide of the Pacific Ocean, breathing in the mist and the salt. The sound of thunder makes me feel alive and whole and well and free. Those miles are the exception, to which the rule aspires. The rule is always pain.

If I were to write, I suppose I would write about my dreams and about the people who influenced them. I’d write about the work I do and the work I wish I could do. I’d write about the systems that bind us and the individuals that free us.

Perhaps, I would write about lost potential and the other kinds of losses I know. I’d write about how buried within those losses, are certain seeds of possibility, that root themselves in pain and grow forth from disappointment.

Maybe I’d write with tears in my eyes and hope in my heart. The kind of hope that rises from despair, because one without the other is inconceivable. They join together like atoms becoming molecules. Automatic. Necessary.

I would have to write about how pain precedes birth, how there are no miracles without labor. And I would write down my questions about that. I’d also write that pain is a tolerable price to pay for the gift of a miracle.

Certainly, I would write of the sorrows in this world. Tender and tragic. To write is to see labors and miracles in print. When I read what I write, I know what I feel.  

What if I were to write? And then sit quietly and listen to the moment. Words are silent but the fingers that type them and the mind that forms them are loud. Let me pause and not write.

Let me be still and listen.