Writing to Learn, Modernism, Reflective Life

Previously, in one of my blog writings, I have mentioned one of the characteristics of being modern is being reflective in life. Reflection makes us modern. That is the connection between modernism and reflective as the title suggests. To be reflective in living life means doing a kind of reevaluation or a reflection on things that we have done so far in our life. Such reflection requires several steps or methods. In reflecting our past actions, we need to undergo a process of reanalyzing our actions meaning that we see much deeper our actions by basing on ‘beneficial and unbeneficial’ rules. Were our actions beneficial or unbeneficial for us and others? But, I am not going to talk about the rules further since I have not known them very well and I even don’t know where to start writing when writing this scratch for my blog. I think it is better for me to strike to the point right away.
Different people do different ways in being reflective in their life. There are a lot of ways to being so such as doing a kind of meditation, contemplation and etc. but, as we all do agree, there is a common way to become reflective in our life and so many people do it in a daily basis. The way is writing. Undeniably, writing is one of the most effective ways in becoming reflective. Many great people decide to choose writing as a means of reflecting the values of their life or even the life itself. Through writing, they can improve and even achieve their best performance in their life. Let’s take a look at some examples like Elie Wiesel, Henry JM Neuwen, or Indonesia; we have our beloved author Pramoedya Ananta Toer. These people choose the path of writing to reflect their lives and it has impacted or influenced a lot people. So, it is clear that writing has a very strong power for people if they want to use it as a means of reflection. But, that’s not the end of the problem. Say that everyone can choose writing be their path in becoming modern in their life, but writing is not an easy path to go through. It takes much than we have ever thought. To write on a daily basis and to write well are a tough job for me and maybe for everyone. Lay men can easily say that to write is as simply as putting words on papers. But even so, writing is not easy. To write something for me takes much energy since I am not used to writing before. In high school, I did not even have a diary or whatsoever which trained me to write. Frankly speaking, I hate writing and this writing is a kind of such expression. Now, for me writing short posting like this have two important advantages. Firstly, by writing like this, I can learn to write better and to be reflective in my life. There is no other way in learning to write except by writing itself. Second, writing continuously makes me at the same learn how hard it is to write. So it not only makes me be better in writing, it also teaches the hardship of writing. In short, it teaches me to be patient. Sometimes, when I am stuck, typing a word in a computer is like baby taking his first deep breath. So hard to do. So, that’s why I don’t really care when people say that my writing is messy and not worthy to be posted since it is my practice of learning. It is just a phase guys. I have regretted my lack of reading in my life that ideas don’t come easily in my mind. Above all, one thing for sure, I will keep writing and learning to write and writing to learn.


Peace and Love

Kristian