Create Yourself

I have realised that my main way of interacting with the world is through words. I read, listen to music, watch television shows and films, and talk, and this informs my view of the world. My experience of reality is therefore mostly figured through a textual prism, rather than an active engagement with it. Although I do enjoy being outside and experiencing things, I will not process, for example a landscape, as easily from being in it as I will from reading a description of it. Maybe this is a consequence of living in a very indoor-focussed and information-full society, or perhaps it is just how my mind works. I have always been able to experience extreme emotions through art (whether literature, film, or music), and I think perhaps that rather than being able to see my own life in these works, it was them that taught me what these emotions even were. I grew up in the process of reading literature, coming to understand death, life, love, hatred, madness.
Is this adequate? Is this just a shadow of what life really is? Or is the understanding I can get from this 'textual prism' a deeper and different one to the everyday understanding coming from experience, and one which can enrich reality?

I read a quotation recently:
'Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself' (George Bernhard Shaw)
I often say that the things I find inspiring are the ones which 'speak to me', in which I 'find myself'. In 'The History Boys', Hector, the English teacher focused on learning for the sake of it and not for exams, describes the best moments in reading as the ones 'when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.' This always made sense to me, and seemed to accurately explain how I felt when art works at its best.
 So the Shaw quotation made me think and reconsider. Perhaps, the things which 'speak' to us are actually the ones which belong to the self which we want to create. They hand which takes ours is grabbing our ideal hand. Art therefore can be a journey of self-discovery, not because it helps us to find some lost self, but because it teaches us, challenges us, makes us see things anew.  Creating yourself is not about being false, but about deciding what values you want to live by, how you treat people, how you prioritise things in your life. Creating yourself and not finding yourself is an empowering concept. You can be and do whatever you want. You have the deciding card in who you are.

So, what does this have to do with the textual way in which I interact with the world with which I started this post?
Well, I have realised that my inspiration book is my way of 'creating myself', of using the textual processing in order to understand what I want to live by, and to eventually enrich my reality.
This blog therefore is part of the process of me creating my self, finding outreached hands everywhere which are taking mine, holding fast to some ideal potential to which I am continually aspiring.

My Inspiration Book

I have lost my Inspiration Book - the book in which I write down any quotes, sentences, phrases, poetry, speeches or lyrics which have caught my interest, provoked an opinion or emotion, changed my way of thinking, or expressed something I thought in a way which is eloquent, beautiful or poignant.
For the past three years I have been recording my findings in a little orange notebook, always painstakingly hand-written in a black pen, author's name carefully written in the bottom-left corner of the page. I enjoyed the personal indulgence of this activity; the book was only for me, written in my own handwriting. The labour involved in adding a new entry became a routine which I embraced, and followed with an almost religious devotion.
 I was close to tears when I realised I could not find this small, seemingly insignificant notebook. After all, it contains writings which I feel have become part of me. I would often return to this book when in need of some comfort or a fresh viewpoint, when I felt that my life was stale or that my mind needed some new stimulation, or a reminder of the things which I had decided were important to me.
I am still hoping that I will find my little orange notebook, but in the meantime I am going to use this blog as a new Inspiration Book. Through writing something which is no longer solely personal, I am intrigued as to how my Inspiration Book will transform. Although I will miss my ritual of hand writing each quote in my black pen, life is all about moving forward, and perhaps this will become a new ritual, a new chapter...