To be felt, and then found through language
An essay on writing is how I remember who I am
Dear Reader,
This weekend, I read two beautiful essays: Audre Lorde’s “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” and George Orwell’s “Why I Write”. And I could not stop thinking about why this space I share with you is not a luxury, but a necessity for me. It then evolved into this personal blog piece, slightly long (8-10 minutes read time). It is not perfectly formatted, but more of a chain of thought. Hope you feel certain things which I have put to words, and they resonate with you. Please do share your thoughts with me if it did! (You can reply to the email, leave a comment, or send me a DM on Substack - this is how you can reach me).
There are things I have always known without knowing how I know them. I would like to think of that kind of knowing as intuition. But the working of our minds, the consciousness, has always fascinated me.
This intellectual evolution we have undergone over these billions of years has roots in all of us, just hidden or, I think I should say, unexplored. And the world inside is unexplored because we are too busy exploring the world outside us. But both these worlds are as endless as they could be.
Literature and writing are means for me to excavate this inner world, starting at the surface, and keep digging inside until I find the core truth. But I know that there isn’t a singularity to this, you just keep searching forever, as similarly we cannot find the end of the outer world, in this endless universe.
But I would like to believe that to explore this, it is to live.
So if I have to put it plainly in words, it is the way that reflects not just who I am, but what it means to be human, to feel anything at all. I write not what I know, but what I am trying to believe. Hoping that someone, somewhere, will pause and feel what I could not say.
Lorde writes that poetry is the way we give form to the formless, name to the unnamed. And that the sources for it are the feelings that live inside, in that unexplored and unexamined space. The one we inherited through the intellectual evolution of our species, but have not yet given a name to. And brilliantly, we found language as a means to give them some form of light.
And I see this now: the quality of light in our inner world is the quality of how we live; and that is the quality of our perception.
Somewhere in my early childhood life, I confused survival with silence and observability, which somehow made me become articulate and composed, at least the way I try to think. And this, you might perceive as passion or brilliance. But underneath all that articulation was defense.
I thought that if I communicated (mostly through writing) with precision, maybe someone would reach me without me having to show them the way. Maybe someone would read between the words, find and know me.
But what I kept not noticing is, no one can find what you yourself keep buried, especially if it is buried within yourself.
So I write.
Not because I want to be understood, but because I want to be known and be felt, to myself and others. Language and words, when I write, are a means not to explain but to invite you into the silence with which I so strongly built my defense systems.
When Orwell describes in his essay the lonely child inventing private worlds, imaginary friends, and made-up futures, I recognized myself immediately. That was and is me, too. That private world he spoke of, I live there, and go to when the real one feels too much. All those stories, people, everything that is imaginary; it is from that space my literary longing began.
And it is still from that space I write today.
That space, that ancient and creative source Lorde speaks of, is no luxury. But a necessity. I realize that it is where I meet myself. It is the same space I touch when I look at a dog and instantly feel maternal, or when I be with someone in silence and know we have spoken everything.
You and I can live continents apart, yet if what I wrote has reached you, you read it, and could feel from the same depth, then we are already together.
That shared space, where my space becomes yours. And yours, mine.
That is why I realized, is that I write.
So no. I would not write if no one were reading. Because I want to share that space. I want to live in yours. To understand and feel that thing, which I still cannot put a name or form to, which connects all of us through our billions of years of intellectual evolution.
Take love for example, it transcends language, space, and time. We try to describe it in poems, music, art, and words. But it could also be felt without a single word, just by a single glance or a smile without moving a muscle on your face.
And for me, I reach it through language.
Because throughout all known history, we created some form of communication: talks, lectures, speeches, scriptures, manuscripts, sculptures, paintings, songs, letters, and especially stories. Why? Because we are trying to give shape to what is unnamed, with no form.
And when I do write, it feels that I am bringing into the world or naming something that previously had no form in me.
But unfortunately, the world is so harsh that it does not encourage this kind of being. People say we have become machines and mechanical.
But I have a question for them, for this world: Have we even been allowed to be human?
I am afraid the answer is no, because it is quite evident wherever you look. The systems, processes, and structures are built not to reward this kind of being.
And this is why I pursue literature and philosophy, which could be in the form of reading and writing, because it keeps me close to what is real in me.
It gives me the contentment that I can ask why we exist at all, why it matters, why it means something, and not feel foolish for wondering.
The rest of my world gives me utility or structure for survival, but this space, this what brings me meaning and a reason to stay. And it helps me give a name to this nameless thing, so it can be thought, by you and me.
I still do not know what my writing means, in any conventional sense. Because there is no singular theme, elevator pitch to which I can thread together neatly. But I do know this is where I keep reaching always:
That human existence is absurd. That life most often is a literal waste of time. And yet absurdly enough, it makes you want to live. That “why”, the absurd longing to keep going, is what interests me.
If you are still here and reading this, maybe you and I are now sharing that space right now. And something unnamed in you now feels a little more known to you.
That is all I ever wanted.
Yours in thought,
Yana 🤎