What is something everyone has in common? What is it that we can all leave behind long after we have left this earth? Writing — one of the most practiced skills we have, and yet also a tool that is often overlooked. However, writing is perhaps the most beautiful product of human work ethic. Writing is a way for humans to capture ideas, stories, feelings, memories, and expression in a way that transcends time and location. It is a coming together of the universal human experience.

Our collective existence, past and present, has been graced with a litany of renowned authors who are masters of their craft. They are able to accomplish, for some, the seemingly unimaginable. With their written word alone, they have the ability to enter our minds and our hearts to feel the most excruciating heartaches, to be swept away by outpouring love, to wander into an imagined setting. They force the tears to stream down your face, they elicit the sincerest of chuckles, and they accelerate your heart rate as you anxiously flip through pages in anticipation of what is to come.

Authors such as the twistedly brilliant Edgar Allan Poe can cover your body with chills as you swear you can almost hear the beating heart beneath your own floor planks. Or perhaps that is just your anxious racing heart thumping beneath your chest wall? But then as you pick up your compilation book of E. E. Cummings’ romantic poems, or the up-and-coming contemporary poet R. M. Drake’s online poetry posts, your heart is heavy with warmth as you can almost feel the love birds fluttering overhead. Then, when you are ready to come back down to earth, you can enjoy the outdoors as you breathe in the beauty and appreciation that is Walt Whitman’s poetry. Regardless of what your thirsty literary soul is yearning for, there is an endless amount of written work just waiting to be discovered — to be felt, to be imagined, to be explored. Authors like these mentioned are the individuals who made me fall in love with writing. It astounds me that one’s words alone can allow you to envision the exact setting they had in mind, to establish a connection with their fabricated characters, or to evoke your emotions, via a stack of papers.

But the real beauty of writing? I believe that lies in the power of nonfiction rhetoric. Personally, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is the one author who really taught myself the untapped potential that is accessible through writing. As much as I enjoy reading leisurely across many genres, it is work like Dr. King’s that seems to just shake me to the core. To be able to employ rhetoric like he does in order to promote and inspire change amongst the masses is unbelievable. Reading his speeches or letters and analyzing how his use of language alone can change the course of history forever, awaking severely mistaken groups, is riveting. For example, one of my favorite quotes of his from "Letter from Birmingham Jail" is “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Can you feel the severity, the tension? Do you hear his call to action? Do you comprehend the urgency in his plea? This is what made me want to really actively begin writing.

The moment I began to realize writing was more than a chore was when I knew it would be almost wrong to not contribute to the writing pool that grows with each new generation. Sure, I may not be the next Shakespeare, but nonetheless I feel it is important to engage in the universal writing community. I once approached writing with a heavy head and stressed mind. It always seemed to feel like a daunting task that I carried with me until the deed was complete. Writing was overwhelming. It required invention, planning, articulating, revising, editing, and perhaps revising and editing again, and again, and again. But once I started to not just read the works of authors, but to feel their words melt off the page and into my heart, I gained an awakened appreciation for writing.

Writing is powerful and moving. It is non-visual beauty that can provide the greatest satisfaction from the way a string of words can just flow so effortlessly yet effectively. Writing is beauty, vulnerability, and honesty. It is a true form of art — the greatest kind — where one can outpour their troubles, their passions, their beliefs, and their creativity. I can be reading the work of an author from centuries before my time and yet still feel the pain they endured, through their words. I can see through their own eyes how situations affected them. I can tap into their minds and understand what goals and dreams they hoped to see in this world — perhaps the world I am living in today, centuries later.

With all that being said, it’s no wonder why we humans are so driven to join this powerful medium of expression. In the end, all these stories, poems, novels, and letters work toward the central focus of writing: the human experience. Our journeys as authors are all different. For some, like myself, it may not have been love at first write. But I think all authors can agree that those authors before them have inspired themselves to contribute their own ideas to the writing pool. Again, joining us all, past and present, in the universal belongingness to the shared human experience. Once you recognize the power and beauty of writing, it becomes a calling to see what you can offer to this world. Grand or not, writing holds the same essential abilities for each person. Through writing, each of us can conceive an eternal expression of our thoughts, feelings, and ideas. Though we may enter and leave this world, our writing will remain, capturing our voices, tones, writing style, personality, and ideas forever.