The Magic in a Sharpened Pencil

We can find inspiration in everything. Pain too. We can let everything get under our skin if we dawn on it for long enough, and the thought of it can make it appear that that’s more of a weakness than a strength, but the power and drive of inspiration makes up for every single piece of it that can make us feel two feet tall. The days we feel it’s strength will always weigh out even the heaviest of the weaknesses.

I’ve learned this for a fact, experienced it with my own body, seen it with my own eyes. I’d like to be able to say I can give the credit entirely to myself, but it’d be wrong to grasp onto credit that I don’t deserve. When someone changes your life for the better and shoves a life lesson into your mind that slips in so easily after it’s been trying to fight through for so long, --when it’s been the piece you’ve been missing for what feels like eternity-- you have to shout it from the rooftops.

I give this well-deserved praise to Lin Manuel Miranda. I’m the kind of person to get obsessed over a celebrity for a year or so, strictly them and only them, and then move onto the next one and give every ounce of my heart to what I know about them, but this man came through to be the one and only exception to the rule and pattern that had never been ruined in the past. He, a person whom I’ve never had the privilege to meet, planted something in my bloodstream that no one came close to doing before like some kind of secret poison. He was different, but why? Why was he so different in comparison to anybody else?

I didn’t know the answer to that myself at first, but I couldn’t help but to notice that in recent times that as a writer, he had a habit of repeating a topic in his work that must specifically appeal to him, and that now, officially appeals to me as well. He found inspiration in Alexander Hamilton, who was portrayed in the sense of a man who “wrote like he was running out of time” while I dreaded my history subject all the way through middle and high school whenever I heard the mention of his name, never taking that home with me. His ‘Tick Tick Boom’ work in memory of Jonathan Larson again spotlighted someone who was shown to portray how time circled around his passion or maybe how his passion circled around time.

It didn’t have to be this way. If he were like me, Hamilton would be nothing but a person I complained about in class with the words, “why do we need to learn about people in the past?” and who I had no interest in learning more about, and Larson would be a, I must admit, very iconic person anyhow, but likely someone I thought of as the maker of “Rent” and a tragic, far too young of a death, but that would sadly be the end of it. I personally never considered his story in any further depth. I’d be missing out, yes, but I wouldn’t have any idea about it which would be a hidden pity and shame, but hidden nevertheless.

This is the very reason why writing and art is said to have the ability to change the world. It’s starting to be taken too lightly, to be honest. It deserves more understanding of what that really means. I notice things every passing day. You notice things every passing day. We all take in this spinning globe in 24 hours that we each must use differently. We look at our surroundings with lenses that won’t match anybody else’s. Someone who is to you, nothing but an athlete, a musician, or a world record holder could be to me somebody with a story that changed the course of my entire life. Something that is to me only a wilting flower or mini seashell could be the symbol of love for you. It’s the things that are little and insignificant to one person that someone else considers to be huge and the most breathtaking thing of any that need to be talked about.

We need to realize the beauty in things to stay alive, to keep breathing otherwise we’ll forget what joy ever was. We are responsible for giving each other something to live for. We’re responsible for making the hard, darkness in this world a little bit easier, brighter maybe. It’s actions like this that keep everything working the way that it is now. Sure, it might not be the reason why the sun comes up tomorrow, but it may very well be the reason why we want the sun to come up tomorrow, and that’s gorgeous. That’s spectacular and definitely not meant to be underestimated.

I’m still young. I haven’t had a hard life, and I have a lot of events that are still far ahead of me. I’m a college student. I have goals for the future. My journey isn’t even halfway over yet, but I must say the moment I have held, I’ve read so many personal, painful stories from people all over the internet and here on the Vocal community, and as much as I’ve teared up to hearing certain ones stories, I can’t say I come close to the agony that many of you have faced, but we’re drawn together like this because of our love for writing and our passion for using our voice.

On this platform, we have the ability to touch hearts and to teach each other the thoughts in our mind that can be life saving to the ones that come across it. The real, truest form of us has taken a stand and has told the world what it needs to hear, what it would be deprived of if we didn’t. The real, truest version of me right now, exists for a reason, and in this moment it’s to share this reminder to all of you who spares me a second, only hoping that something the size of a grain of rice is taken from it.

I thank people like Lin Manuel Miranda for sharing their interpretations of life with the rest of us and for giving us reminders we didn’t think we needed or that we might have thought we could do without. I’m happy that he’s doing what he loves and providing us with masterpieces that change our view on the world and who makes us live life a bit smarter. Because of him, we are able to think more carefully about how we use our seconds, and how they become minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years, slowly and gradually serving as the building blocks of our downfalls and achievements alike. I thank him because as I look out at the horizon, I know what I want to do with myself.

I might not change the world as much as he has. I might not implant intelligence and open up minds left and right the way that he’s unknowingly done for me. I might not have an audience that’s as big as his, and I might go on smiling about the few that do stop to listen to me, but the point is that I’m trying and that I’m talking about things that are important to me with all of the courage and bravery I need to power through and get it done.

We leave an imprint on each other. Within other’s work and the way they pour out their hearts, I found myself, and I’m proud to be someone who becomes better by the good influences I run into when I need it the most. I love to have come face to face with the key to inspiration.

I feel like I've found the key to life.

I've really, really found the key to me.