Dear friend,
I recently read “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky. It managed to be an easy and enjoyable read, despite touching on many serious topics (the mature themes surprised me, since I remembered seeing a lot of kids reading it in middle school and I definitely wasn’t mature enough to understand this book in middle school).
The very conversational writing style is something that I was aiming for developing in creating this blog, but hasn’t really happened yet; I feel like I keep falling back into the structured essay format hammered into me in school (which I don’t find particularly interesting to read or to write). Writing without a particular structure in mind is a lot faster, so I aim to do it more in the future, and hopefully I can still present comprehensible arguments while doing so. Maybe that’s what the editing step I always skip is for… Practice makes perfect I guess!
One of the recurring messages of the book that resonated with me was to “participate” in life, meaning to express and act on your own desires and not just put everyone else first. (While I like the sentiment, I don’t love that particular word choice; I think something like “using your agency” more closely captures the meaning. But that’s a bit of a nit pick.) This is something that I feel like I need to work on as well. I often care more about what other people might think and want, and then will drag my feet to help myself. But unlike Charlie, from the book, I don’t have almost super-human emotional intelligence, so I have a trouble understanding people and don’t just automatically know what they want. Which means I need to rely more on good ol’ fashioned communication (which I don’t feel that confident in either). I feel like I’ve still got a lot of work and growing to do!
Anyway, my interpretation of “participating” is to be vocal and take decisive action on what you want, because if you don’t do it (or even express it), no one will.
Sincerely, Liam