Thinking Thoughts

I’ve never considered myself a writer.  A thinker, yes.  A talker, yes.  A writer?  Writers go to school for writing.  Writers publish books.  Writers know all the writing rules about punctuation and grammar.  I’m not good at those things.  So it’s strange when I hear people refer to me as a writer.  When people say they like my writing, it surprises me.  Catches me off guard.  Can’t I just be a thinker?  A busy, thoughtful, scattegorized thinker?  (See- a thinker can make up her own words…because a thinker just thinks things that sound right, whether they are or are not.)

We are all thinkers.  There’s no thinking degree.  Thinking is free.  Thinking doesn’t come with rules.  I think a lot of things, all day long, I think.  I hear them being spoken in my head, sometimes speak them out loud when no one is around.  Then I write them as I think them – how they are displayed in my head, how I would speak them.  I don’t think about the correct way to word my words or space them or punctuate them.  I just write them down how they enter my head.

I’ve always written songs, a little poetry – I did it for fun.  I did it as a child when I had so many trivially painful things to think about.  I would put my words to three simple chords and play them on my bed, my floor, play them on the roof.  They were my thoughts and dreams and aches.  But I never, ever considered myself a writer.  I just think all of these many, many things and have to put them somewhere or I fear they will evaporate, they will disappear.  And if they disappear, those thoughts weren’t given the life they deserve.

That life was wasted.

And a life, no matter the kind – whether it breathes from lungs or exists only in the abstract, deserves attention and love.

A life is defined as the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continuing change proceeding death.

But don’t thoughts grow and reproduce?  Thoughts are ideas that begin small and turn into larger, more important things that can become something bigger.

A human life began as a thought.

Many things can be considered a life. I think if the thing can die, simply cease to exist one day, then that thing had life. And all sorts of things can one day cease to exist. Life can be animal, vegetable or mineral…or it can be a friendship, a relationship without a proper space to exist, it can be words – either written or thought, it can be three simple chords strummed clumsily on a guitar, it can be anything.  Anything can be anything if you think it so.  Therein lies the power in being a thinker.

And these particular things, these words right here, are for anyone who’s ever lost something or someone, and aches for it to return…if only for a moment.

These words, these thoughts, these things are about saying goodbye.