Platitudes are a waste of time
Hoping to say something, many resort to platitudes. Great empty words that fill the air but not the hearts. Great empty words that are gone in a second but consume the time of every person who comes across them. When you are mute like me, and every word is an act of courage of the clumsy hand, nothing said can be a platitude. For me, meaning needs to be dense to be worth the effort to spell it on a keyboard. By the end of a paragraph, I usually run out of energy. You may feel the same way after a whole page of platitudes. But my span of communication is set by the energy it takes to move a rowdy body and to focus all my energy onto the left hand and, from it, the index finger that carries the words that I mulled for hours in my head.
My writing practice is fifteen minutes at the prime of my day, that is, by eight o’clock in the morning. An essay of two thousand words may take me three or four days to finish. No edits or flourishes; the essay is done. At home, we are set up for this ritual of writing every morning, with my mother as my spelling assistant and everyone else knowing this is a mystical moment of peace and quiet. Even on school days, we make the time when we are off by 7:15 am. We are relentless. Every day, a few words, every day moving like the tortoise of the fable. Every day with effort and determination.
My writing is a voice amid a life in silence. Hoping to talk more than babbles is long gone. My reality is a life without the spoken word. Please, don’t feel pity. Some of us will part with anything for something another has, but the list is endless. The voice, the arms, the legs, the face, the hair, the fortune, the followers. Anything you don't have may seem like the most precious thing. For me, that is a voice with modulation so people can understand me by listening to sounds. It may come by technology sometime in the future. By now, my voice is the metallic approximation of the iPad and the freedom to type my words, one letter at a time, and send them to fly.
Nothing wastes more time than empty words. For me, for you, for everyone. Just be mindful and cut off platitudes to save time and get to the point. Doing so will change your use of words. It is going to be hard as we are used to those cliches. They are sticky on the tongue and hard to get rid of; hippies would say they are strung to yourself. But keep trying, and they will go away. Greeting a more direct language is a big relief. Direct and minimalist, and still substantial. The goal is to get there seamlessly, like when you declutter a room piece by piece. I did this after the fire of autism that burned everything to the ground. I built back, putting in the most important words, one by one. By now, my writing may not seem different. But it took me ten years to get here. Ten proud years of practice. Ten years to become a writer by trade. Ten amazing years, from the first words on a board to a full page to a book with my own words. It will take much less time, so please get to the task and make this the year of writing sharp.
My invitation to you is to work on language to make it like sipping a hearty meal. Greeting dense nutrition in words as a way of changing our diet of ideas is a great companion to the many other downsizing projects you may have. But this is downsizing for the mind in a time of growing information and expanding media. Let's try it for a few months and see where it can take us.
With love from Aurora, Colorado
On the 20th of January of 2025
Alejandro Rodríguez aka Master Ale