September 25, 2004
-
Ever had something you wanted to write or say but when you actually got
to point that you were going to do it you just… couldn’t. Ever had a
letter you wanted to respond to or an essay you felt you needed to
share, a message board post you wanted to refute, a telephone call you
wanted to make, or a few words you wanted to tell someone in person,
but when you decided to say it you found that the words you think you
have aren’t quite all there?This happens to me all the time. I would say I really should respond to
this or I really need to say something. But when I actually compose
myself and get ready to say it, the process goes something like this:Ok here we go. Computer ready. Check. Environment. check. Necessary resources. Check. Enough time? Check. Alright here we go….
….
….
….
I got nothing to say.It’s not that I don’t know what to say, its that I simply have nothing
to say. It is a circumstance that necessitates a response either for
simple politeness or for the sake of future connections or to correct a
mistaken assumption or assertion. But in that place within me from
whence the words should come, or more truthfully from when the need and
desire to write should come… nothing.And then there’s the annoyance and then anger and then disgust. Why
nothing to say? In mind are words, a thousand drafts. I could churn out
the writing in but a few minutes. I very likely would have had I done
it immediately without thinking. But now after the preparation
after the cursed thought all that might have been is lost.But what would I have created had I bothered to act immediately I
wonder? A meaningless work. A piece of drivel a thousand thousand of
which are transmitted every day with little purpose. Perhaps…
perhaps… I can hold out the hope that everything I say has a little
bit of influence, that the web of effects even the most miniscule
actions of a being can have on the rest of the universe is too huge for
the human mind to comprehend. But what comfort is that really? If
anything it leads me to a greater sense of responsibility that makes me
all the more hesitant to put down the necessary immediate words. How
easy it would be to throw a pebble and start a tidelwave? Or maybe just
a small inconvenience or change a perspective in a direction it should
never have gone.In the end I sit there for a while before letting myself get distracted
by another thing. I say to myself that I will write it some other
time, later or another day. But then later comes and the same sense of
emptiness comes and then the next day and more nothing. And as
time flows the need to write grows no less but the challenge of making
myself grows all the more difficult to overcome. Now I think
about how odd it would be to respond days or weeks after the effect.
Now I convince myself that such an act would just be a waste of
everyone’s time. I convince myself that others have probably forgotten
and probably didn’t care about it nearly as much as I did in the first
place. All these things are things I don’t know of course but
they are enough to keep me from expending the miniscule amount of
effort that I should have exerted so long ago.Eventually of course it really does become an absurd thing to think to
write after an eternity has past. All that is really left of the event
is my own sense of regret.From this kind of inaction I fear are so very many possible futures lost…
