When the words don't seem enough

I was reminded today how very pompous and bombastic I can be when writing. Being apparently incapable of explaining things simply is both a blessing and a curse. I suppose if I am somehow blighted with the gift of overwhelming eloquence and bombasticity, that I should be grateful. I saw some very simple words today. Plain, simple truths written in plain, simple text, with no embellishment or adornment, much like how a flower needs no raiment, it is beautiful enough on its own. Simplicity it seems, is beyond my feeble grasp, although I would like to believe that I do at least possess some measure of clarity of meaning.

On simplicity, C. S. Lewis once wrote that we should not use words too large for their subject, for if we use ‘infinitely’ when we mean ‘very’, what would we use when we really need to address infinity? John Ruskin wrote something similar which truly cuts to the bone, “Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.” I wonder how many times have I written things that others frequently just glaze over? Although Cyril Connolly gives me some meager comfort with the words, “Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.”

Do we connect with ourselves? The lingua franca of today seems to be overly concerned with either ‘knowing yourself’ or ‘connecting with other people’. Even meeting up with someone you haven’t seen in years just to catch up is called ‘touching base’ now, as opposed to just ‘meeting with an old friend to catch up’, some even construct it as ‘maintaining networks’. I remember back in mass communication, there was this bloke who took it upon himself to be familiar with everyone else, even though he later confided to me that he hated doing that and appearing shallow. His rationale was that it would be expedient to maintain relationships because ‘you never know when you might need someone down the line’. I found his utilitarianism utterly self-serving, but in retrospect, it was probably exceptionally effective. Conversely, he is a shallow creature today; exactly what he once told me he resisted becoming.

The question remains, is it possible to connect with yourself? To know yourself so completely that you are entirely comfortable with who and what you are? I see that sometimes in people, especially musicians who are ‘in the zone’, when they’re just playing and the world matters not, when their eyes are closed and they’re moving to the rhythm of the music, for a single moment, completely and utterly in tune with their soul. When the being moves as one. I have never experienced such an epiphanic moment, except maybe when I’m truly writing and nothing matters beyond the words on the page, and for a moment there is no need to think, no need to act, no need to consider the prose upon the page because for a moment you’re so utterly in tune that words flow unfettered from the soul onto the page.

Another point in my long and random discourse. I used to think that my strength, my confidence and apparent unflappability were things that I drew from within myself. I have found that to be a lie. My strength is drawn from so many other sources all around me. My friends, my romantic relationship, the people I work and interact with, God… all these things coalescing into what I’ve always thought was my own unique strength. In that, I’m not truly alone, as much as my existentialist leanings suggest I am. I am thankful, grateful, for these persons around me. In that line of thought, none of us can survive alone, for we are always supporting and lending our strength to one another as we borrow strength from others.

Causality dictates that all this ‘strength’ has to come from somewhere, it could not just materialise by itself. Ex nihilo nihil. Nothing can come out of nothing. I’d like to imagine that initial strength as God.