Boston Anderson
Mrs. Marni Davis
AP English Language
18 September 2015
Why I don’t Write
“Why I write” is a complex topic that requires a complex answer from each individual person that writes about it. A thesis such as “I don’t write because I’m extremely average and not at all interesting,” would be true for me. At the same time, it wouldn’t be true. As my favorite writer John Green taught me, “Truth resists simplicity.” The idea that simple things are usually a lie is not an idea I particularly agree with. I believe that in reality, there is always more than meets the eye. That being said, I can’t change the fact that the reason I don’t write is because I’m extremely average and not at all interesting.
There are 7,366,869,564 people living on this planet. That is actually a lie. Actually it’s the truth, but it isn’t exactly that simple. When I researched the number of people of people living on this planet, the page changed approximately 500 times before I could even copy and paste the number into this essay. Today alone, 354,823 people were born and that number changed about 1000 times before I could copy and paste it here. 148,967 people died today and that number keeps rising too. Joseph Stalin (who was actually a quite terrible person but apparently a great writer) said it best when he said “When one person dies, it's a tragedy, but when a million people die, it's a statistic.”
I am a statistic. I was born a statistic, I live as a statistic and I will die as a statistic. You will too. In a world full of people, each with interesting and complex and equally important yet unimportant lives, I am just one more number on a laptop screen. You are too. There are so very few truly remarkable people in this world, and I, for one, am definitely not one of them. Someday we are all going to die and there will be nobody left to remember any of the “important” people, let alone people like me. I am an average, American, 16 year old girl. I have blonde hair and blue-gray eyes. I am nothing important. I am not worth remembering, that’s why I don’t write.
Yes, I am unique, I am interesting, but so is everybody else. I have great ideas. I think differently than many of the people around me. I have different, magical, wonderful, and intoxicatingly beautiful experiences. My likes and dislikes are not exactly the same as anybody else’s. I am not the same as anyone else. Just like everybody else.
What could I possibly have to say that would be anything of value to anyone else? What words could I possibly have to offer that anyone else would ever want to read? I can’t offer advice or opinions to this world. I am still little. This world should be offering advice to me. This world should be giving me opinions and telling me what to think. I am young and dumb. I don’t know what I should be thinking, let alone what anyone else should be thinking.
I am not funny, I am not a genius, I am not particularly beautiful, I have no status and I have no wealth. I don’t have 937 thousand followers on Instagram. The number of people that follow me on twitter is embarrassingly low. I am not famous or celebrated. Those are all the things that really matter in this world, right? Those are the things people are remembered for, right? I am not any of those things. I am not Beyoncé, I’m not a Kardashian. I am just normal. I am not anything important or special, and that is why I don’t write.
If only it were that simple.
If I believed what the world said about me, it would be that simple.
But I don’t.
The truth resists simplicity and I refuse to be simple.
Are you kidding me?
None of those things are the things that truly matter! Maybe those things are what matter to the world, but the world has been wrong many, many times before. What is right and what is wrong is not based on the opinions of the people in this crazy mixed up world we live in. The worth of a soul is not based on the number of people that like that soul’s photos or tweets. Hitler had millions of followers. Jesus had 12. Does it really matter very much if millions of strangers remember me? Do the opinions of strangers really matter?
I don’t have to be famous or wealthy to be memorable to the people that truly matter to me. They don’t have to be famous or wealthy to be the people that truly matter to me. I cannot tell you who won the super bowl last year, (or any other year for crying out loud!) What I can tell you is the names of people who have made an impact on my life. These are people who were there for me when I was at my lowest. I can tell you the name of my kindergarten teacher, and the name the person who was my best friend when I was five. I am actually still friends with both.
In the end, no one will be on this earth to remember anyone, whether they were “important” or not. I don’t know what you believe, but I believe that there is a Heaven. I believe there is a God above. I believe that God knows, loves, and remembers me, even when I forget to know, love, or remember myself. I believe that in the afterlife, we will all be much less concerned with celebrities, and a lot more concerned with the individual people that made a difference in our lives and in the lives of people around us. The world we live in places a lot of value on things that don’t actually matter.
The world needs people like me. People who are not afraid to be unapologetically themselves. People who change the world one person at a time. The world needs more average people to do above average things. The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is a little extra.
The world doesn’t know me as beautiful, wonderful, memorable, or smart. The world doesn’t actually know me at all…
…That’s probably because I don’t write.
@boston_sassachusetts
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