To Write is to Wager...

Catlynh Phan: To Write is to Wager...

    A few classes ago, Dr. Reddick was reading aloud a passage from his book during class concerning story telling and one quote jumped out to me "to write is to wager." And, although this is not the complete quote, I remember talking about how writing and narrating is to take a risk that something good will happen. And perhaps I might take that a step further to say that in recording and remembering our lives, we hope that something should come out of everything that we have done before.

    The act of wagering is to take a risk and be vulnerable, like Ernest Hemingway famously stated, "to write, you must sit down at a typewriter and bleed." When we write, we commit ourselves to be judged, and maybe there is a sliver of hope that we want to be understood, but then again there is the inevitable chance of being misunderstood. We must confront the triumphs and tribulations of our story and the hard truths that maybe we weren't ready to face but in writing and remembering we do. 

    Perhaps writing is also our way of making ourselves immortal an act of preserving a piece of us in time and maybe that is why it is a wager. To write is to wager that our shout will be heard in the darkness and not be mistaken for nothing.