How Dare I.

A lot of retrospection ends in that simple phrase. "How dare I."

Today, the retrospection began with the phrase, "You're an introvert; you're predisposed to hating people." And, as scheduled, ended with the conclusion that I've been wrong enough to warrant a "how dare I".

I've been accused of selfishly hating humans in general quite a bit. Human and yet at odds with humanity, yep, that's me. Even this past week, it seems like everyone has noted how much I hate people and avoid them. And I think that accusation has happened partly due to a self-proclamation. In a lot of ways, I've freely admitted my distaste for humanity. The selfishness, the complexities, the intrusions, the complications, the things I can't change: sometimes people are just too much.

But what about the heightened sense of arrogance that is woven through that mindset? How dare I casually deem some of God's creation as undeserving of my time? How dare I only have understanding for myself? How dare I view people as worth God's time, yet not mine? To ignore treasured children of God because they frustrate me, to devalue the meaning that comes through the sanctity of life: that is the pinnacle of arrogance, and that has been me.

How dare I?

Especially when only a few things can be deemed as having sanctity. And "sanctity" itself is not a word like any other in the English language; its meaning is unique. It has no comparable synonyms. It means a pure, holy, and sacred recognition which would be wrong to dismantle. But I believe the ultimate definition of "sanctity" is "something explicitly blessed and willed by God." That is why a marriage of two believers is one of sanctity. Marriage is a union of two of God's creations, his children, breathed in his own image and likeness. And the love in it is one birthed by God and exemplified through Christ. In that is the sanctity of marriage. But the sanctity of human life is above that, even.

Human life is so indisputably sanctified because each one sees existence due to the will and purposes of God. And sure, so is everything else. But not everything willed by God is created in his image, created with capabilities of knowing and glorifying his character. That capability is specific to human life. Each human life is born with purpose, with a capacity for emotion, ministry, knowing and experiencing God, expanding their soul. Lives are not accidents. Humans are purposefully breathed into existence in the image of God. 

He creates, designs, and whispers exquisite purpose into each life.

That is why human life has sanctity, and that is why it is absurd, fleshly arrogance to devalue even a molecule of that.

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Why I Write.

One-sentence summary of my blog: I write, I write a lot, and the reasons for which concern none. Yet why people do what they do is often an extraordinary study. It involves entirely unrelated variables in most cases.  

I never thought there was anything specific about my love of writing. But I guess there is. I like writing because it’s safe. It’s tangible; it’s here; it’s my creation; it’s a tiny piece of me in a safe spot. I can make that spot beautiful or gloomy, quiet or abuzz, easy or difficult. Whatever I want, I can create. Expressing tiny flecks is hard, because it’s the tiny flecks that get washed away the quickest. But writing about the tiny flecks is a different story. I cherish what I write. I hold it, I reread it, I perfect it, I analyze it. I observe intensely the tiny piece of me that I just unearthed. Writing makes the untouched parts of my soul tangible. I can see it and grasp it. The emotions flow through my fingers as I write them. I can define what I feel. I can give it a safe spot. Kinda like words are my best friends.

Writing is art. It's a particular construction of language, but it stems from individual perspective. Like other forms of art, you use the tools you have to piece together your masterpiece. There are so many words, and they are my paint, and my mind is the brush that applies them. It's an art form that is a definitive expression of me. It's self-serving to put it that way, sure, but self-expression is definitionally art. And vice versa. Writing is plaintively another art form, and the words we choose add color, breadth, and individuality to our work. Art is incredible because we choose the specific methodology of most accurately expressing ourselves. In shorter words, art is a form of catharsis.

I partly enjoy writing because of the art, the creative expression that it stems. It's the form of art that I am most adept at commanding. 

Yet further, I write because it's a deposit box. I have a purple notebook that has contained all of my thoughts, emotions, and rants over the past few years. The conglomeration of the now-filled pages represents a painting over time of who I am and have been. Art is self-expression, sure, but it is more so a haven for what you express. I could say this is the case simply because art is predictable. Unlike humans, art is safe. Depositing your thoughts into an art form means that they will be preserved purely as you intended them, rather than misconstrued by humanness. Depositing emotions into a human counterpart is more of a variable. It is worth it, but not nearly as risk-free. 

Art as a host of emotions is lovely, but the safety is still not its most beautiful trait. The perfect preservation of your emotions is what I love the most. When you deposit emotions into words, the preservation is flawless. The flecks of you remain unchanged. The wiggle-room for the misconstruction of your thoughts is minuscule. It stays there, preserved in all the lingual beauty that you have created. It is not morphed by time or weather; it remains as the words on the page, the words you breathed. It exists as exclusively the deposit box, and nothing less: built for the emotions that were poured into it. 

Writing is self-expression; it is art; it is safe; it's a preservative. But most specifically, it's an excavation. You start writing, and it unearths every part of you. It takes the thoughts, vast emotions, and undefined feelings and puts them into a tangible form. It's a definable expression of the human soul. That is the purpose of art; that is the purpose of writing; and it is why I write as furiously as I do.

And finally I suppose this culminates in a deserved tip of the hat to the one art-form I haven't yet mentioned. Loving another human being is also an art. And now my two most beloved art-forms have collided. I now pour my writings into the person that I love, depositing my emotions, thoughts, and feelings directly into him instead of my purple notebook. 

I've actually found that now I write less and less. Because I've taken the risk of pouring myself into a human, and this time, the deposits have been reciprocated. They have been cherished, and their reciprocations have been cherished by me. Writing is beautiful; it's a safe, preserving, expressive art. But so is loving. 

It's even more beautiful, challenging, and wholly sanctifying when a human becomes your deposit box.

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