Writing

I have always found writing to be a very useful thing to do. Often as a child (since I was an only child) I found that the conversations I might want to have with people were not possible. I had friends to talk to but often they were of different religious and cultural backgrounds than myself. I might want to talk to my parents (But one always has to be careful about this sort of thing). So, often I would write down ideas and ways of looking at things or conversations I might want to have with someone because I could start to resolve things that were bothering me that way. I was always very intelligent like my father who was valedictorian of his high School in Seattle (Lake Forest Park) and very intuitive like my mother. So, often I understood the world in a deeper and more useful way than children my own age. So, I survived often when others I knew of or knew did not. The world was in some ways in the 1950s more friendly to children in one way and less friendly in another. So, then like now was always a paradox and if one didn't know how to protect oneself (or didn't have parents and relatives in place to protect them) then they were not going to either emotionally or physically (or both) survive.

So, writing about things that I was upset about or things or ideas that came to me or fantasized about were some of the things I wrote about. I also often doodled on pieces of paper in class at school to pass the time when listening to the teacher drone on incessantly about one thing or another. However, I did like History and Science a lot. I always got good grades in those subjects all the way through school. And after 4th grade I always did fairly well in English because I was recognized as a capable writer by age 9 by my teacher in front of the class. I was always a natural storyteller like my father and Grandfather. They came from a long line of men who told stories around the dinner table or around the fire or campfire that stretches back into history and prehistory. Before TV and Internet and radio this is what people did. They told stories about their experiences in life. That was all we had before TV really hit big around the mid 1950s. Most people I knew didn't have a television until about 1953 or 1954 and even then it was a black and white TV. Color didn't get good enough to want to buy a color set until at least 1960 to 1963.

So, often writing your ideas or fantasies down can help you understand yourself and your world better. Often I could take hand written papers and stick them in a drawer under my underwear or T-shirts and take what I wrote out after a week or month or two and go, "Wow! Did I really think that then?" Because, after all, we are all changing all the time. What we write as a child one day we are going to think is silly the next oftentimes. So, by writing down my fantasies and ideas I could then read it all later and go "Wow!" did I really think that then?" And this is where perspective in life comes from. From seeing how much we change through our lives. It also helps develop discernment regarding the fact that we have to survive so many different kinds of experiences in our lives even to survive to be an adult at 20 or 25 or 30.