By Leonardo Rodriguez Carrion
Today, everyone writes. Everyone (that we know of) reads and writes today. On social media, at school, anywhere, and everywhere. People used to read books out loud, but that changed some time ago. I am sure we are glad we did because we all can’t be reading aloud simultaneously! Or maybe we could?
One of my favorite quotes is from the famous inventor Nikola Tesla. “Of all things, I liked books best.” I can’t write about writing without mentioning reading. I like to engage with my readers, so I invite you as we delve deeper into this article. I have been writing for a long time now. I write down my dreams, and I keep a journal. A lot of people do; they do not talk about it. Writers and poets usually don’t talk about it. Often, if we do, it’s with other like-minded people. Not to say you are not like-minded; I just don’t know how many people I can go deep with these conversations. So, here I am, writing to you about it.
You know what’s the best part about writing? You get to decide how much you want to share, how you want to share it, with who, when, and how you share it. Without writing, we might regress to many of our previous states in human history. Such is the argument, for this is why we push the youth to go to school so much at an early age. Yet, today’s schools are not the schools of yesterday and will not be the schools of tomorrow. The schools we have today clearly cannot continue, and our parents and even grandparents have known about this for a while. I speak from personal experience and as someone who is in their 20s.
As we often do (and I often do), I like to look back at one of the most ancient and well-preserved societies of learning in what is today known as Greece. In Plato’s “Phaedrus,” Socrates presents his argument against writing to Phaedrus. “For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their memory within them.” (Plat. Phaedrus 275)
I just wanted to let you know that I left the previous paragraph for you to consider. Ironically, if Xenophon and Plato had not written the discourses of Socrates, we may have lost his teachings over time. Writing is the subject at hand. I can continue to write about this subject on and on. Writing is as infinite as we are as creative people. I have wanted to write about this for a while now. Do you enjoy writing? Let us not take for granted how much it gives us today.
The power of writing is not something to be taken for granted. We can deliver information in seconds today, whereas it took days, if not weeks, or even months, before we wanted to write to each other. I hope you enjoyed my article as much as I enjoyed writing about it. I concur with Socrates. If given the opportunity, I would enjoy this conversation more with someone than writing to them about it. For now, this will do!
