A Word Is A Costume For Its Meaning

I love writing. As the sole contributor of my blog, I realize this is probably not an unveiling of shocking, personal information. But, nonetheless, I indeed love to write. However, because I love to write so much, I hate being forced to write. It’s like that scene in Matilda in which the little boy says he loves chocolate cake and as punishment, Mrs. Trunchbull presents to him an enormous, delectable chocolate cake and forces him to eat it until he physically can no longer pick up the fork. This is the cinematic equivalent of my college education’s influence on my passion for writing.
Many times in my training for how to write as a public relations pro, I practiced being quick and concise, at times writing three different press releases in two hours. You can bet this did not leave much time/room to add an element of myself in my writing. In fact, after two years of this, I began to resent writing.
But then, in my last semester at the University, I took a creative writing class that proved to be one of the most profound classes in my college career. It was profound in the way it called me to incorporate myself in my work. First, to think about what stories have derived as byproducts of your life experiences, and then incorporate them in a way that calls a human connection amongst a reader, I assure you, brings your writing to a whole new level.
And just when I thought I had escaped the humdrum of college writing, I came to Mexico to study Spanish. If any of you have attempted another language through a course, you know that writing proficiently is often regarded as the principal benchmark. Thus, I have written more pages in Spanish about my daily activities and my beliefs than I can stomach. Eventually, to save my sanity, I decided to try my hand at writing poetry in Spanish. The discovery was grand.
It was like I had discovered a whole new world of words (okay, this is indeed what actually happened). But these words and the way they are arranged revealed all new imagery. Even the smallest words can provide an entire new way of thinking about something. Take the Spanish word, por favor for example. In English, this equals ‘please’, but literally translated from Spanish you get, ‘through your favor’. This conjures the thought of, ‘my actions are only possible through your favor’, which can also grow to, ‘It is through your good graces that I can achieve what I desire for myself.” A bit verbose? Absolutely, but that’s what makes it so beautiful.
Apply this to your average pop song with the crappy lyrics: “Baby, please love me.” In English, this proves to be cliché and lame, but in Spanish you can get: “It is only through your favor of loving me, that I can feel what I need to feel.”
So there you have it, in a place where the words initially made no sense to me, I have rediscovered my love for writing because I am no longer simply translating my world…I am discovering the meanings of a new one.