New Blank Document

I love to sit down to write in the morning and open up the Word program on my computer. It’s not that I necessarily love sitting down to write, although I often do love it. And it’s not that I particularly like working on the computer, although it is a great convenience, and one I would miss if I had to give it up. But what I really love is going up to the menu bar and scrolling down to ‘New Blank Document’. I LOVE THAT. New Blank Document! NEW: ‘Something that has not been used by anyone else’. BLANK: ‘Not written on, not yet having, or showing, interest or awareness’. DOCUMENT: ‘To make a record of something by writing about it’. Damn, it speaks to me like a blank canvass might speak to a painter. What do I want this page to say today? It can say anything I want it to.

Our daily lives are New Blank Documents as well. Every day we decide what we want our lives to represent. What do we want our clothes to say? Our attitudes? Our actions? Our Words? Our Intentions? What do we want to put on the page of our lives? What do we want to record as part of our own personal historical record?

Our lives are being published, whether we push the publish button or not. We are being read by the people around us, those who know us, and many who don’t. We influence them in ways visible and invisible. Some of my clearest, and most profound, memories are of ‘moments of kindness’ by various strangers I have encountered along the way. And some of my greatest influences have been the simple lives of a few people I have grown to respect over the years, people who gave thoughtful consideration to what they put, daily, on their New Blank Document.