Sometimes I feel like I write because I can't do anything else, though I know that's technically not true. I could be a wonderful sock model, or maybe even a food critic! I think I'd like that. The only problem is that I don't feel any passion for those fields. You know what I do feel passionate about? Commas. Commas are the best, but only when people know how to use them properly. There are times when I literally shriek because of how happy I am about a comma. I know; I know; I'm being ridiculous.
You do weird things when you're an English major. Like punctuation, for instance. Look at the last little bit of the previous paragraph: "I know; I know; I'm being ridiculous." Do you notice what's weird about that? Semi-colons. I lied about commas—well, exaggerated. Semi-colons are actually the best (the caveat still being that they must be used properly!). But back to semi-colons, a device used to connect two related independent clauses. Most people would write the same statement like this: "I know, I know, I'm being ridiculous." What's the difference? Commas. This is not the place for commas. When commas are used to separate two independent clauses with no coordinating conjunction (and, or, so, etc.), it's called a "comma splice." "Ain't nobody got time for that." Well, actually, most people do. But English majors don't.
Another cringe-worthy infraction is ending sentences with a preposition. I do it all the time (see above, "what I do feel passionate about?"), but I do it knowingly, and I wince—every time. Winston Churchill once said, "Ending sentences with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put" (roughly). Sounds over-the-top, right? Most people would agree with that. In this day and age, nobody speaks like that, so obeying that grammatical structure sounds, frankly, ridiculous. Even I recognize that, so I conform to society despite my best wishes. But that doesn't mean I don't cringe.
Believe it or not, there actually is a point to all of this. Being such a dilettante of words, you can imagine my joy this morning at church when I heard an English concept applied to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The girl who was teaching said that life is like a research paper, our thesis is our cause, and our actions are body paragraphs that (ideally) tie back to our thesis. My mind was blown. That's such a great way to look at it! The thesis is what keeps a paper consistent; it brings clarity and direction. Without a thesis, we have no paper—we've just written a lot of noise.
But even with the best thesis, the paper is meaningless without clear body paragraphs that directly relate to the claim. We can say that Hamlet is a psychopath (I'll prove it later), but if the paragraphs that follow are all about Romeo, what good does it do? We're just babbling. Coming back to our lives, if we profess to believe in Christ yet we don't follow His teachings (all of them, not just the easy ones), then what are we doing? If our thesis is to get a good education, how would dropping out of school accomplish that? Does spending all day at work and then yelling at our spouse, children, roommates, etc. upon getting home really help us prove our thesis about the importance of family? Just as the Apostle James taught that "faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone" (James 2:17), so, too, is our thesis dead if we don't have body paragraphs that tie back to it. Everything we do should reflect the cause we fight for (or "for which we fight" if you're an English major).
We all have goals, and we all have distractions, so let's all conduct a self-inventory and figure out what's keeping us from reaching our goals. If there's anything inconsistent in our actions, maybe it's time for a revision (re-vision) of our lives. It's never too late to write a new draft, polish our paragraphs, and tie them back to our thesis.
For more on how to align our actions with our righteous goals, check out the following talk by an Apostle of the Lord:
I thought music was your passion. English is a great major since so many of the people in the USA don't have a clue about how to use it.
ReplyDeleteGo ahead and correct that if you need to, Richie.
I find this man's words of wisdom to be most excellent.
ReplyDelete