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Why Do We Write?
Writing has been around for
thousands of years. The Romans, Greeks, Phoenicians and Egyptians
all wrote. One of the earliest forms of writing was cuniform, a
pictographic writing system used by many languages over several
empires in ancient
Mesopotamia
and
Persia.
Storage of
thoughts and ideas
Because man has the unique
ability to create thoughts and ideas, we need to store them some
place. If we store them in our mind, we tend to lose them. There are
so many thoughts and ideas created by each of us on a daily basis,
that there is no way we could store them in our memories. So we
write them down.
Which Ideas are
Important?
I am not sure that most of
our thoughts and ideas are all that important, but some certainly
are. And some can change lives and the entire world that we live in.
For example, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Edison’s light bulb
both changed the world. These were both concepts that developed out
of ideas that were written down. Given the number of thoughts and
ideas that we each have, how do we know which one’s are the
important ones?
The Connectivity
of Thoughts
One thought leads to another
in an endless chain in our minds. Edison had many failures before
creating the electric light bulb. As he analyzed each failure, new
thoughts and ideas “popped” into his head. He wrote many of these
down as he continued to experiment. Were these failures wasted? No,
they were necessary to give him the new ideas to keep experimenting.
He would change one thing as a result of his observations, which
triggered new thoughts.
Since our mind continually
provides us with a chain of ides and thoughts, is one more important
than another? Was one thought more important than another to Edison?
It is this connectivity of thoughts and ideas that actually is the
creative process. These thoughts are the link between the known and
the unknown. It is possible that without one of the thoughts in this
chain, we might be without the electric light bulb in our world.
Ways to Store
Thoughts and Ideas
Books, eBooks, journals,
magazine articles, newspapers and the internet are all ways that we
record, store and convey our thoughts and ideas. There are literally
millions of pages of printed information produced each day on the
planet Earth. This reflects an incredible number of thoughts and
ideas that each of us create on a daily basis. With over six billion
unique people on the Earth today, this is not hard to imagine.
How many of these thoughts
and ideas are brand new, never before thought of by anyone concepts?
I suspect that very few are truly new, however that does not make
them any less important or significant. There are many discoveries
resulting from an old idea or thought being looked at in a different
way.
For example, the Greek,
Archimedes, a mathematician, engineer and philosopher discovered the
principle of buoyancy and density, known as Archimedes’ Principle
while sitting in the bath tub. Does this mean that nobody had taken
a bath before this time? No, Archimedes just looked at the problem
of water displacement from a different point of view. The principle
of buoyancy is critical to boats and airplanes.
We are all unique beings, we
bring our own experiences, thoughts and emotions to any idea or
thought that we encounter. One single change to a thought or idea
written by someone else might produce the next revolution in
technology, energy or medicine. Just because a thought or idea is
not unique to the world does not make it any less valuable.
It is said that;
“We read to be influenced by others and we write
to influence others.”
I would add that we write to
make our thoughts and ideas available to others. They are stored for
anyone who wants access to them. As a friend noted:
“We write to communicate with others.”
We read to increase our
intake of thoughts and ideas. The ideas that we take in increases
the amount of ideas and thoughts that we create.
Even re-reading our ideas
from the past can stimulate new thoughts and ideas. Because of new
experiences and ideas between the time our thoughts and ideas were
originally written down and the present, we think about past ideas
in a very different way. This is what journaling can do for us.
Journaling is one way of
recording your thoughts and ideas on a regular basis. Typically,
journaling is done in a fancy notebook, called a journal. I
encourage everyone to journal as a way of expanding your mind and
recording an idea that might just be the next one in the chain of a
major breakthrough for the world.
My next newsletter will
discuss more about writing and the benefits of recording your
thoughts, ideas and emotions.
To Your Success,
H. Court Young
H. Court Young is a freelance writer, author and publisher. He has written 3 books
on water and terrorism. He uses a laptop computer to write at the
local Barnes and Noble Bookstore where they have high speed internet
connectivity.
He has been a computer consultant and network specialist since
his first computer purchase in 1977. He is very interested in
technology and in particular laptop computers.
You can find more books, articles and information
by Mr. Young at his publishing company website:
BurgYoung
Publishing
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