Many people have their addictions. Some are addicted to TV, others to narcotics, and the list goes on and on. I guess my preverbial addiction is to writing. I crave writing like food, and I like the release that writing can have on me. It’s almost like I open gate to let my dreams, beliefs, feelings, and knowledge run wild as I press the keys.
I was never like this, never an extravagant writer. In fact, I hated writing, despised it as a supertaster would despise bitter foods. This hatred for writing was bred after I had taken the SAT tests in high school. Feeling confident I would do well, I wrote on the topic assigned to my heart’s content. When I got the scores back, my heart sank. I had bombed on the writing portion of the SAT’s and I convinced myself that a baboon could write better than I could. I swore that I would never write extravagantly again, never put effort into my writing. After all, I would give them a reason to give me low scores on the SAT.
Luckily, this only lasted the last few years of high school and my first semester in college. The way I wrote papers seemed like a first grade student was at the laptop, typing about his favorite pet. “My dog ran. My dog peed on the bush. My dog killed the bush. My dog got punished. My dog got angry. My dog ate the carpet. My parents killed my dog,” is only an example of how I wrote most of the time. I wouldn’t get much more creative or vary my sentence structure more than that. This changed when I came to Colorado Christian University.
I was in a class called Research Writing and we had to write a 20-page paper for the final product. What subject would I choose? I had many things that I wanted to write on, but I knew that I didn’t have the ability to write well unless it was a topic that I could throw myself into and could lose myself in. Difficulties with my mom made the decision final: I would research on the benefits of forgiveness, as I saw unwillingness to forgive as a nasty trait that a lot of people possessed.
The best topics are those topics that shape you while you are doing research on them, and will continue to shape you even after you have turned the final paper in. While researching, I thought about myself and the real reason that I was writing. Wasn’t I not willing to forgive? Due to this, am I not a hypocrite? If I am, why should anyone listen to me? I had the intent to throw this paper in my parents’ faces and say, “Grow the heck up!” I’m glad I didn’t, because it took a lot of spite on my part to be able to write such a paper as this. Had I actually shown the final product to my parents, I would be in a very different position than I am in now. The final bound product is sitting among my boxed items, waiting to be read by my parents. The time isn’t ripe for it, as it needs more editing and I still have more to experience in life before I have the strength to be able to tell them about this.
I read the paper every now and then, and have made a few corrections. It is opinionated, yes, but it is the truth. Littered throughout the pages are instances where I have perceived I have been wronged, glimpses into my life. They are the emotional scars that I bear and the things that I don’t think about day-to-day. I have added to and taken away ever since I first wrote it, but the fact remains constant: I place a lot of value in forgiveness. This paper has molded me and shaped me, as the people who know me best can attest to. It has also influenced me to write about topics that I love and those that I feel strongly about, even though academia may place me lower on the totem pole. If you read it, read it with care and an open mind, as the facts presented in it are pretty revealing and the experiences laden with emotion. After all, I wish it to change people’s lives and attitudes towards each other when they interact with each other.
http://www.4shared.com/file/bGjvqAhB/The_Power_of_Forgiveness_in_Di.html
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