My wife found this and I likely wrote it sometime in the 1990s. She thought it was good and wanted me to do a blog article about it so here it is:
(I'm describing T.S. Eliot's statement in the title)
I think it's because as a writer one is trying to do the impossible: To convey deep meaning with words that are in the end only symbols to represent reality. In some ways being a writer is as impossible a task as trying to convey the fulness of having a baby, making love or flying a plane without actually doing it.
As we know it cannot actually be done. Herein lies the real rage and frustration of all writers who for some of us writing is as important as breathing.
Because I kept writing and trying to express the impossible I got better and better at expressing the impossible.
Each writer expands the boundaries of human existence by trying to express the impossible into words.
(The last two sentences I added tonight because it sort of left me hanging out in space before).
So, I guess I likely wrote this before I got my first blog going at Yahoo Geocities in 1999. Then eventually you had to pay for sites like this and so I bought an archive site and discontinued that one.
One final thought: I am still alive partly because I still write about what I'm happy about and what I'm sad about. By expressing what I have felt along the way, often I found I could survive things in my life I didn't really expect to when they happened.
Somehow, by expressing how we feel either verbally and maybe recording it or saying it to someone else or in writing the terrors we all face start to become bearable and survivable in all our lives.
Also, Joy can be as hard to deal with as pain, especially in your teens and 20s. Joy can be as stressful as pain and sadness which I also found to be a surprise during my teens and 20s.
The highs and lows of teen years and 20s I found unbearable. The highs were so high and the lows almost took me out completely from human life. I found an evenness in the end was the best.
In Buddhism, they call this Lam Rim. The Middle Way or Middle Path. In the middle path of Lam Rim I found Peace during my 30s.
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