Sometimes The World Seems Hard

Sometimes The World Seems Hard                

By John W. Vander Velden

Sometime the world seems hard. Sometimes it is.

Few get through life unmarked. Most of us get some cuts along the way. Those cuts leave scars that remind us that life isn’t always painless. And though nearly everyone has those ragged patches where flesh has bound to flesh we are also cut by invisible blades. Blades of heartless comments, or cruel remarks. Blades of failure. Blades of unfairness. Blades of loss. Those blades leave scars as well, only those marks can not be seen with the eye.

Rarely do we speak of the marks we carry. We do not consider them medals of valor in the battlefield called life. Most often we believe them to be failings or weaknesses, private matters that are no ones business but our own. Yet we might understand others better if we shared those scars. For locked away within us all, are the same kind of wounds others have felt.

Look inside and see your own scars. Look inside and open yourself up to another’s wounds.

In a world that has so much hate and anger, finger pointing, and the, it’s us against them attitudes. In a time when it seems only the loudest shouts are heard, while the cry of a child doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. In a society that is certain that each of us is abused by everyone different than we are. In an age that asks why should we help others because nobody has helped us? Have we become so internal, dwelling so intently upon the differences that divide that we are unable to see the vast magnitude of what we all have in common?

Sometimes the world seems hard, and sometimes it is. But it’s not just hard for you. It’s not just hard for me. And it is true that it might be less hard on some, but it is also true it is a great deal harder on some others. Few get through life unmarked, but it is up to each of us to see the scars, and care…To hear the crying child and to act. To help a wrinkled and bent man through the door.  To share our time with the lonely. To see those the world wishes to hide away and offer a bit of the respect they too deserve. But most of all to forgive!

Sometimes the world is hard, but it’s not you job to make it harder. Few leave this life unmarked…don’t be the invisible blade that slices at the heart and soul of another...

(430 Words) 3-20-2019

What Makes A Writer?

What makes a writer?

By John W. Vander Velden 

I guess I can’t honestly answer that question. I have no way of knowing what drives others to write. But I can speak for myself. What makes John W. Vander Velden a writer? If you have gone to my bio page you will have read the first clue. John is a lifelong storyteller. And I am. I do not know what drove me to create stories, but my imagination has been a powerful force within my mind as long as I can remember. I wrote a series of Blog posts on storytelling and how it has changed even during my lifetime. I may post a few here on some later date. But this is not some ramblings about the changes in storytelling; it is a bit of rambling about me as an author.

Imagination creates scenarios, but storytelling is shaping those rough concepts into something logical enough that others can share that world with you.

Storytelling does not a writer make…on its own. But it helps.

I had difficulty in the mechanics of my language…English.  It was that difficulty that stood in the way of putting my stories down on paper. Memories of high school pages drenched in red ink stood as a wall between me and the page. Those images drove a feeling of inadequacy that held me hostage. But, to my good fortune and perhaps yours as well, things happen in life that changed my perspective. The first was reading a series of books and feeling the story, though long, was incomplete. I began writing a sequel in the late seventies. Each day I wrote page after page in long hand. I filled several spirals with my absolutely awful handwriting. The result more than 1300 pages of mostly drivel. But I learned I could tell a story.

Then a story came to me in the late eighties, “The Second Life of Joshua Smith”. I have not penned a single word from that tale. But it built much like a serial, day after day, the story of a man that much like Job lost everything and the life he build following that disaster. Even as I worked at my regular job, if I happened upon a dull moment, a scene would play out in my mind. It was fortunate at those time I worked alone, for it would have been difficult to explain the tears. That was a new experience, to be emotionally moved by my own story.

Those things and the access to a word processor gave me the courage… to write. It occurred to me that I might not know all the mechanics, but I could hire someone to repair my mistakes. And red ink or not, NO ONE could tell my stories better than me. And so in 1999 or 2000 I began writing my stories and I haven’t stopped yet.

(475 Words)  3-15-2019