speaking up.

"There are degrees in idealism. We learn first to play with it academically, as the magnet was once a toy. Then we see in the heyday of youth and poetry that it may be true, that it is true in gleams and fragments. Then, its countenance waxes stern and grand, and we see that it must be true. It now shows itself ethical and practical. We learn that God is; that he is in me; and that all things are shadows of him. The idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism of Jesus, and that, again, is a crude statement of the fact that all nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

...

When I was little I was "into everything." If I felt like painting, I was an artist for the day. If I felt like writing, I was a writer for the day. I was a dancer, an actress, a teacher, an explorer, a pirate... we all were, weren't we? In the days when we assumed we'd be taken seriously, and yet were the first to laugh at ourselves? I once had an art show and sold my paintings to my parents' friends. Funny I actually thought they'd want my work, and now, I'm hesitant to pick up a colored pencil. Don't we all know this feeling? Struggling between vanity and self-deprecation, overcome with the obsession over how good or bad we really are-- so obsessed that we bottle everything up, picking and choosing when to be ourselves and when to not? We dance in our rooms alone, and we crumple up that poem we wrote in the middle of class. We're desperate for approval, and yet we're convinced that no one will approve, and so we decide that we might as well just shut up. Previous rejection tells us it's not worth it-- dreams and ideals-- they're not worth it.

Who did this to us?

Yet still, despite our embitterment, through "degrees in idealism" we float-- up and down and all about. It's fairy tales when we're little, and romance in our teens-- we're constantly re-adjusting to our surroundings and experiences and disappointments. The prior ideal fails us and we move on to a new one, yearning for meaning. We know there's got to be meaning. Often, perhaps, this is the only thing we know. But it's enough to move us onward.

So I find myself contemplating, daily, in awe, this "rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself." I grab my computer and type-- searching for where I am today, who I am, what it all means...

...

There are only like three people I consistently share things I write with. And it pretty much stops there. I've been told I should start a blog but my hesitation has always been that "I don't draw, I don't sing, I don't dance" impulse-- that fear that maybe what I have to say is nonsense. And it very well might be. But who cares then? What's the big deal? The paintings I sold weren't worth a penny my parents' kind friends spent on them. But what harm did it cause? If anything, it did good. I spoke, and even if what I said was useless, the speaking was not. We need expression, and we need to be comfortable with expression, no matter the result. For through expression we participate in the "rapid efflux." Perhaps no one will recognize the beauty in our words, notes, strokes, and this is a scary thought. But how much scarier is it to imagine a world where no one ever expressed out of fear that they would be misunderstood? If not a poet wrote, and not a singer sang, how sad and lonely and confusing a world would this be.

And so I've started a blog, an avenue through which I may express my "degrees in idealism"-- ever-changing and yet all united by the belief that they're worth pursuing, worth sorting through, and worth expressing-- my jump back into childhood, with the silly hope that I might have something to say.

We'll see how it goes.