Hi friends! My semester ended on Friday, and I've been just hanging out ever since. On Thursday, my friend who writes poetry gave me a full collection of his poems, and there are a lot of them. We've spent a lot of time the past two years (since I met him) discussing literature, including poetry, and I really appreciate that he was so willing to share his own work with me, not just one or two poems, but a hundred pages worth of poetry. So I've been reading through the collection since then, and I read one the other day that got me to thinking about desires. Desires seem to be a theme of poetry in general, and especially his, which I really appreciate. Because I really don't like revealing my desires to those around me. Just this morning I shared a desire with my parents, and they didn't react the way I would have hoped. But what is it about the desires of my heart that I'm afraid to show people?
I think some of my desires just seem impossible. For example, my desire of being a published author. Not just self-published, like here on the internet, but a real, honest-to-goodness, with a publisher, and a physical book in bookstores with my name on it, published author, having written a book that someone out there dares to purchase. I don't want to tell people about that desire, because I don't want people to crush that dream. I already know that publishing is incredibly difficult, and the chances of my doing so, especially studying literature instead of creative writing, are slim to none. But I still it is a desire of my heart. I want to protect it.
Sometimes, I think if I speak something, if I say it aloud, it will just shatter the dream. In fact, I know it does because I've done it before. Once something is said aloud, it can be known by other people. And some desires are too special to be known by just anyone. Some things are meant for your heart alone, or really, for your heart and God's. Which is kind of beautiful.
And I think this is part of why I'm so hesitant to share my writing (of any kind) with even the people closest to me in the world. I want to be known, and my writing has so much of me in it, I know, but I'm afraid that once it's been read by others, it's no longer special, and it's no longer just mine. Not to mention that because my writing is composed so much of parts of me, the moment anyone reacts in a way I didn't intend, I become a failure, and it says something about who I am. Or at least, I let myself believe that.
I think our desires say so much about who we are, and what we expect out of life, what we were raised to believe and expect, and who we were created to be. Desires reveal our dissatisfaction with the way things are, and our dreams for the way things could be. Our desires are a lot of the reason we think and say and do so much. Revealing that to the world, or even to another person, is incredibly scary, at least to me. So props to the people who are unafraid to share their desires.
Anyway, I'm sure there are other reasons why I keep my desires so hidden from others, but these are the ones I can think of right now. Thanks for thinking about some desires with me!
