After eight years of writing, I've come to one question:
What am I writing for?
And I've, thankfully, come to an answer. I write . . . because my life is a story worth telling. Even as ordinary and mundane as it is. Even as ordinary and mundade as I am. It's a riveting tale that I like to put to medium, regardless of anyone or anything else. Half the fun of a tale is the telling of it! And I want to tell this tale- my tale, because . . . it is a rich one. A tale full of fortune and opportunity and grace. And I think- or I hope! That telling it to you will help you see the fortunes in your own life more clearly. But it's not enough just to call a day a tale- there's standards for this thing. In other words, there are three pillars of a tale.
Belief
Every good tale begins with a belief. Every tale, myth, and story, at its core, holds a central belief. A belief that the story will end in victory, that it will teach a lesson, maybe even that it will end in tragedy. But you believe, and because you believe, you live. Someone had to believe in you to even get you here, and you too began to believe and all that belief adds up into the world we see and experience. Without belief . . . is there anything at all?
Appetite
The greatest lives are the ones with appetites at their centers. You can call that hunger whatever you want- yearning, ambition, greed- it all is a driving force. If the belief is what starts the engine, appetite is its fuel. Perhaps you acquired yours in childhood, a high you experienced and chase eternally, or its something that you haven't gotten to understand the taste of yet- but it waits in your belly, swirling, needing the spark of belief to jumpstart its consumption of your mind and soul. The appetite is what makes the ordinary fortuitous.
Patience
Perhaps the most important pillar of all- you'll do nothing with the other two without patience. What's a tale without a furious storm? A fearsome foe? A moment of shattered faith? These things that put a stopper on belief and wither an appetite, unless you can weather the storm, and wait for your soul to feel hunger again. There's other words for it- conviction, forbearance, will . . . but in the end, it's all what you can patiently wait to achieve. And its that patience that will take you to the end of your tale, and hold you up while you wait for the next one to start.