Since I’ve decided to write more, I’ve decided to learn more about writing. A book that I’ve been trying to read over the last few months, but have had too little time to read is The Glamour of Grammar. The author, Roy Peter Clark, suggests that the readers pick their favorite letter. Immediately, I thought of the letter K, as my first name starts with a K, but as I continued to think about it, I decided on the letter I. There are a multitude of words that I love that begin with that letter: Illicit, Imagine, Invincible, Ingenious, Illusion, Illustrate, Integrate, I, Intelligence, Instill, Identity, Inertia. I also love the way these words roll off the tongue, to me they are strong and poetic. I’ve never thought of myself as a word person, but I love to read words. Sometimes, I get lost in a story and take my time reading a passage, lost in the words that illicit images and thoughts, letting every syllable of the words flow through my mind.
As a child, I never loved my handwriting and took considerable time to perfect several letters and symbols that I write; I, %, K, and &. My ‘&’ is something that does not even resemble an ampersand in the least amount, but I love it all the same because it looks like a ‘+’, which to me means the same thing and for some reason I could never seem to master the ampersand in any form that I liked. I love my ‘%’ as I make the top ‘o’ link to the forward slash and this proud accomplishment took me weeks of doodling in class to master when I was 12. My ‘K’ varies depending on my signature, if I’m printing my name, or if I’m just writing a sentence, but I love each different way of my writing it, just as I love the different nicknames I go by. Sometimes, I wonder if this contributes to my identity crisis of “who am I?”. Which leads me to ‘I’. I started journaling at a young age, but in college when life became a little challenging, I decided to try to recreate how I write ‘I’ and to even re-create myself. If you knew me when I was 20, to who I am now, I am very different even in my appearance. People can change, I changed. I created a new me. I created a new life. I do know the actual act of me changing the way I write a capital ‘I’ has nothing to do with my change. It came from a conscious decision to push myself beyond my boundaries and comfort levels. I think changing how I wrote the letter I is a reminder to me that I can create whatever I want in my life, even now.
I am reminded that there is still work to be done for me, who knows, maybe I’ll change the way I write ‘I”s again. As I am always evolving, maybe my ‘I’ needs to evolve with me. Although, I do think growth is something that continues throughout our lifetime and while I had forgotten my goals, I’m thankful to have found them again.
I have always found the lower case ‘i’ to be fun and wistful. The dot can transform and blend into the handwritten letter. I can make it a pointed dot or a tiny circle to give it more emphasis. The lower case ‘i’ also represents an imaginary number in math. Although, ‘i’ also has a serious side, like me. It looks like a candle a flame of knowledge or a head on top of a body representing the mind.
Another reason why I love the letter ‘I’ is that it also represents the number 1 in Roman numerals. I am one person, I came into this world as one, and I will leave as one. Combined together ‘II’ represents two, ‘III’ represents three and it can be added to subtract one or add one to additional numerals, ‘IV’ equals four and ‘VI’ equals six. This is how life works, people come and go, adding and subtracting from our lives. While seeing that we all come into this world and leave alone is a sad perspective, there is the flip side that we are all in this world together. There are 7 billion “I”s on this planet and we are all connected by our humanity. I will always be one with a separate mind and a separate heart from those that I love and those that I don’t even know, but I am me and there is power in that knowledge and there is power in knowing that I can share and connect with numerous people within my lifetime.
Live. Love. Laugh. 