The Power of the Written Word

I was struck today with the true, deep down understanding of how fragile life can be; of how each waking day comes with no guarantees and of how important it is to make a difference in the present moment, if making a difference in the present moment is possible. I was also inspired as a writer and as an artist and I hope that inspiration will stay with me and will drive me to make some positive and much needed changes with regard to my creative life.

This morning, over coffee, I read a short story about a woman named Julia Campbell. She was a writer, a teach, a Peace Corps volunteer. She was murdered while hiking in the Phillipines, where she'd been doing volunteerwork helping the Phillipine people, by a man who claims he did not mean to kill her. Apparently, he was angry over an argument he'd recently had with a neighbor when Julia bumped into him and he flew into a rage. No matter the reason for her death, a void will now exist where her life once was, although the work that she accomplished, the caring, courage and committment she displayed in her life will be remembered by those she helped and by those who love her. She will live on through the good she did in this world, and she will remain an inspiration to those of us who, thus far, have only dreamed about having the courage to reach out to others in the way that she did. I stumbled across her blog after typing her name into the computer because I wanted, after reading the magazine article, to know more about who she was. After reading several of her posts, I prayed that the blog I was reading did not belong to the same woman whose life had been so suddenly ended. A peruse through comments left under the last passage she wrote confirmed that it did.

So, I'm left with the feeling that what we do with the time we have is very important. If we want to write, if we have that passion, then probably there is some purpose out there waiting for us. If we feel a fire in our bellies to paint, to create, to love, to help others, there is a reason G-d ignited that fire. To ignore it is to deny the very purpose of our lives. Even if following our dreams is sometimes daunting, even if being a creative person sometimes causes us pain, even if helping another person means suffering through some discomfort on our side, it's extremely important to keep moving in the direction of those dreams, of stoking the fire within. Of making life really matter.