On becoming an iceberg

There was a time, about a year ago, when I thought I was done with reading, at least for a while. It felt as if I reached some kind of milestone and my knowledge-gathering had plateaued.

To give a bit of a back story, about a year ago, I felt that my life had remained roughly the same in the past 7 years. I view 2019 as the year things changed exponentially for me. I progressed from zero to one, since I got into reading books and thinking, which I did not do at all before. I begun life anew. It’s as if I was baptized that year. But after that, the increments have been only in numbers rather than in orders of magnitude.

I did feel that there was progress and I suppose that is how progress happens. But I felt I was consuming too much without producing anything, so it seemed perfectly natural to slowly slide to being a writer rather than a reader. I felt the urge to pour something out, I didn’t know exactly what but I had an urge for creation. And I didn’t mean stopping reading completely, but rather shifting my goal from gathering knowledge to creating stuffs.

But creating was not at all an easy task. Oftentimes I found myself procrastinating, but on the side of progress. I would instead read a book rather than write. I was writing more than before, but reading still kept on surfacing, even when I tried suppressing it. Deep inside me, I still felt I didn’t have everything I needed. To be honest, most of it was fear that kept me from writing anything.

Since I was fixated on the problem of reading and writing, I started seeing it everywhere. Most importantly, in whatever I read. I started seeing the writer beneath the writings, and I could feel the weight of knowledge they carried. Everyone was a voracious reader, who read everything. I would see how the entire body of knowledge lurked beneath even the simplest of poems. The work any writer produced turned out to be a mere fraction of what they’d consumed.

Everyone was an iceberg.

After reading The Library Ethos, I realized I was nowhere near where I wanted to be, or thought I was.

There are lots of reasons for why I want to write, I’m writing a larger piece to navigate this puzzle itself. But something I’ve gotten dead sure about is that I must write. Some years ago I thought I needed to gather knowledge, because I felt I didn’t have anything to talk about. Now I’ve come to the realization that one can never have enough knowledge. I must be a lifelong reader– a seeker. And the act of writing isn’t about sharing what one knows, rather it’s a process of discovering yourself, a process of thinking, and a process of understanding that must go hand-in-hand with reading. Reading and writing are one and necessary parts of something whole. If I want to create anything– not just good writing– I must be an iceberg myself.

But the thing is, I’ve come a long way in what is a marathon. The biggest challenge in running a marathon for a non-runner is deciding to run, and then actually showing up. I believe I have shown up and started running as well.

Quoting from the essay itself,

We are not mere individuals struggling in isolation. We are part of a vast unbroken chain of explorers, academics, thinkers, orators, artists, musicians – people who have wanted to keep the light of human consciousness alive, people who have lovingly tended to that flame, for themselves and for others. You too can be a Keeper of the Flame. There is no one single Order or Temple or Church or Authority. It’s a wonderfully complex, loose assemblage of hundreds of millions of people throughout space and time. I am never truly alone, for I have the light of human consciousness pulsing through my nerves. I am a verse in a song that echoes through millennia. I am Feynman and Archimedes, I am laughter and joy, curiosity and awe, discovery and delight. We have always been here, trying to keep hope alive for ourselves and for future generations.

And you are absolutely welcome to join us. <3

I fell in love with the whole essay, but related with this paragraph the most. I too want to become a keeper of the flame. Maybe in some way, I already am.