In a part of his poem ‘The Prophet’, Khalil Gibran expresses the importance of work. He wishes to say, ‘Work is a meaningful way to make use of time,’ and this is how he says it:

‘When you work you are a flute through whose heart

The whispering of the hours turns to music.

Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent,

When all else sings together in unison?’

Similarly, Edna St. Vincent Millay writes in the verse below that death may be inevitable, but there is nothing as beautiful as a life well-lived. Here is what she writes:

My candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—

It gives a lovely light.

When placed just right, words can be powerful things. They have the ability to turn a simple idea into a piece of art, and to weave them into something uniquely yours is the art of writing.

The written word is a doorway into a world of infinite possibility. And because in this world, rules go out the metaphorical window, how we choose to tell our stories is entirely up to us.

“At the age of 9, Joanne Rowling moved with her family from the British suburbs to a house close to the Forest of Dean, which led her to imagine within it a world of mythical creatures and magic. This forest would later become the location where part of her Harry Potter series played out. The ideal father figures in her story like Dumbledore, Hagrid and Sirius Black were born out of the fright she felt for her own father. Years later, after a failed marriage and a young daughter to single-handedly support, she grew depressed. This dark phase in her life was what led to conceive of ‘dementors’, foul creatures that fed on people’s happiness.

Imagination was Joanne’s way of coping with the harshness of reality, but this world that she created wasn’t hers alone. It would eventually come to be shared and loved by adults and children the world over, and continues to do so even today.”

One might say that words are combinations of alphabets with spaces in between; that they are of no consequence in a world where ‘action’ is everything. But consider these words:

Eureka

Yes we can.

I have a dream.

These phrases are more than the sum of the alphabets that make them up. They hold within them the hopes and sentiments of those who uttered them, and those who listened. The magic of words is that they paint pictures in the mind of the reader, relying on your imagination to give them meaning. In essence, they hold stories.

And now it’s time to share yours.