If there is one thing I could change about myself, I would make it so I wasn’t such a shy person. It’s funny, but a lot of people who know me actually think that I am a very confident person who strolls through life laughing and doing all the things I want to do. In some ways that is true, but in the middle of my heart is a very shy person who is worried about fitting in and being accepted by people. I’ve been like this since I was a kid, and as I have grown older, I’ve found it difficult to have confidence in myself. If I see a pretty girl in the street, so many times I wish I could walk up to her and say hello and say something funny that would make her smile. But I don’t because I worry that I will make a fool of myself and look stupid. This fear is something that stops me being easy in my friendships and relationships with other people. My friends would say I quite complex, and that can make it hard for a lot of people to get close to me. It’s this lack of self confidence and fear that drives me to obsession with activities and projects, which makes my behaviour quite intense.
I do believe though that we all have the ability to change ourselves in any way we want. It’s one of the fundamental principles of Bhuddism – that we all have the potential for enlightenment, and hence ultimate change – which forms the framework of my beliefs about spiritual stuff. Well I won’t go into that any more other than to say, all that spiritual stuff gives me the belief that we can always improve ourselves and we aren’t stuck in any place (emotionally, physically) that we don’t want to be in.
Perhaps that’s something in life that I am meant to overcome. That letting go of being shy and being afraid of people, and learning how to really be that confident person that other people see in me. This blog is a perhaps a part of that.
A while ago I read an article written by a great writer to people aspiring to be great writers. I think it was Earnest Hemmingway who said something like, ‘if you want to be a great writer, write about the most personal things you are thinking, as if to share them with the person you would least want to know’. I can see his point really; if you do this, you are garaunteed to write from the heart and every word will have meaning and emotion which the reader will pick up on and absorb. Writing is all about evoking emotions in the individual who is reading you; who you are at that point in time having a relationship with. One day I would like to undertake a writing project and write a novel about life and people, and the way it see it. I think I would call it, “This Life Through My Eyes”. I would write it like Charles Bukowski wrote his novels; part journal, part story, all raw images of a life the way he saw it and lived it. Yeah, I would like to do that. It will be my legacy to the world, so that when I am no longer here, I will have left behind some small contribution that means I will have done something worthwhile while I was alive. Much like this blog as well I suppose!
I wonder if anyone will have heard of me in 100 years?
Padwanna.
The On being shy and becoming a great writer by Mentalechoes, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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