It might come as a shock, but I have not always loved writing. In fact, for many years, I despised it. I get writer’s cramp way too easily, and am not the fastest when it comes to keyboarding.

          I must have been too young to appreciate writing for what it is: the most beautiful art known to mankind. Don’t get me wrong; there are a great many art forms that deserve recognition: what would life be without music, color, and flavor?

Yet, no art so clearly captures the human experience as writing. Why? Birds produce melodious sonnets, flowers demonstrate an array of colors, and herbs and spices the world over yield their culinary perfection to those underserving of them. Writing, however, belongs to mankind alone.

Through writing, passions are inflamed, souls plunged into grief, hope struck up in the heart, love floods the being, and laughter graces the mouth. All these things and more from a few simple words.

I believe it was said best by the great Cicero himself:

“What could be so wonderful as when out of an infinite crowd one human being emerges who - alone or with very few others - is able to use with effect that faculty that is a natural gift to all? Or what is so pleasing to the mind and to the ear as speech distinguished by wise thoughts..? Or what so powerful and so splendid as one man’s speech transforming the impulses of the people..? Again, what is so regal, so magnanimous, as lending aid to those in distress, raising up the afflicted, offering people safety, freeing them from dangers, saving them from exile?

          Writing denotes power in so many ways. The power to encourage, the power to uplift. But the greatest power of all?

The power to inspire.

Yours truly-