A cover sketched by yours truly for my intended novel “GOD’S PRODIGAL DAUGHTER” – loosely based on my earlier years; which still lies smarting unfinished in a drawer somewhere!
Dated 12th Day of June, 2014
HOW DO YOU DO IT? ….
How do you tackle your correspondence, write an article, or express a deep felt opinion as to how you view the world? Or how you would like your steak cooked best?
Are you one of those brilliant scholars who puts quill to parchment and gets it right at the first attempt? Or are you a bit like me; often anxious and impetuous trying to present a not- so-clever ‘off the cuff’ delivery. I am usually overcome and ceased by a light bulb moment when I find myself in such a predicament by rashly dotting down the moment the bright idea enters my head, simply to express quickly (before I forget) what’s in my heart; rather than my brain?
Then when reading back my delivery, I get well and truly poked in the eye by my own appalling mistakes, trip over my punctuation with embarrassment, and swallow hard with frustration at the multitude of obvious errors that wash over me like a wave of subliminal messages. Never mind the sentimental nuances that are seemingly buried in there somewhere, but are belied by the imperfect sentence structure delivered by the impulsive way I went about expressing my innermost sentiments.
We can of course execute several drafts today, then wait until another day, and go over it once again. But then what we were trying to express in our impromptu delivery no longer holds the original truth and genuine essence. We are suddenly in a very contra indicator mode – where we are attempting to make our article academically perfect and wholly acceptable to the recipient, or maybe even the masses – heaven forbid. It has suddenly become an exercise of academic perfectionism to show off, rather than making one’s sacred and simple offerings to share of oneself; warts and all and without the pretence – that we are better or more than what we really are.
Of course I can always maintain that English is not my native tongue, and that I was borne of a Dutch Mother and a French Father – parents who both came from a genetic pool dating back to ancient Judea. Lol! (It’s not supposed to come off as some light jesting, and neither am I kidding you). But is it fair to use this example as an excuse to cover up my own grammatical (if this words exists) shortcomings?
Along with all its confusion and ‘bad grammar breath’ the somewhat temperamental punctuation which seems to infiltrate its way into my sentence structure in all the wrong places, and over which I have absolutely no control – kind of like challenging a Ouija Board; is it that am I still trying to find a way out by apportioning blame somewhere else to disguise my own ignorance?
Undoubtedly, a well written piece is a joy to the intellect but sometimes one can be too well polished I think. Especially where the essence of the sentiments will surely be lost in the perfect setting, and the constant rearranging of the original wording. To my mind the original piece always acutely suffers at the hand of too numerous a draft. All I am saying is – whoever we are, and no matter how smart, or mediocre for that matter – there is always room for improvement. Simply striving to attain to that sometimes elusive perfectionism means we are really consciously making a haphazard attempt at bettering ourselves. There is no shame in such a humble aspiration. Also a lack of grammatical knowledge does not detract from a person’s intelligence or common sense. Intelligence and intellect is an ingredient one is endowed and born with . It is that quality which makes you the individual you are. But through lack of usage and mental growth and constant seasonal fertilization for the purpose of growth and enrichment, this great gift can be lost without the application of feeding the mind with a doze of beneficial information and connective data. However, above all I can safely reassure anyone who is like me, to make a conscious attempt to stay on that perpetual ‘learning’ curve. So take heart if there is hope for me, than there will certainly be hope for you.
In conclusion, we all have it in us to be great. So long the motivation behind those aspirations is a noble objective and is too solely serve as a sense of satisfaction to please oneself only; and not because we need to prove it to someone else. All we need to do is to reach out and make that extra effort to stop our brain matter from stagnating. 🙂
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