Friday, November 26, 2010

The Thought Gardener

When I was blogging on a daily basis, I was driven mostly by a desire to learn. I wanted to learn about myself--how my thoughts stand on their own, bare and naked on a public blog. It wasn't important that I had many readers; just the possibility there could be someone reading my entries imposes a certain form of discipline to my writing.

That was what I strove for. I wanted to use the discipline of blogging to not only record my thoughts on my varied fields of interests, but also to hone my writing skills.

This is different from writing in a personal journal; there you don't need to worry about an audience. Blogging requires a bit more care, but yet remain casual enough for one to experiment and let go. A blog is a good practice ground for a writer. It is like an artist's sketchbook, where raw ideas emerge in bold strokes of the pen.

During those years of blogging, I realized that I wrote most naturally when I was writing on spirituality. Spirituality and religion are subjects that I returned to again and again. These are areas which I had spent an entire life contemplating about. And I still have a lot of thoughts that I want to explore and share.

These past few years have been busy ones for me work-wise. I am still striving for balance between the material and the spiritual side of my existence. I try to infuse spirituality into whatever task that I am doing. I am mindful of every impulse that stirs in my mind. I observe them and follow their perambulations; I trace the roots of their lineage and track their lifetimes.

Some thoughts are seeds that bear fruits. Some thoughts are like cancer that can only destroy the body. The fruit-bearing thoughts, I nurture them with tender loving care; the cancerous ones, I kill them mercilessly.

Here in this blog, I hope to plant some of these fruit-bearing thoughts, May they flourish in time.