Words

Words

Melissa Dallago 

    For several years now I have been collecting quotes from books and speeches that I have read that moved me and inspired me to "Think Differently," to use Apple's motto.  I love reading words, but I must confess that I love writing them more.  My hope is that my words move someone as much as other's words have moved me.  Writing is a release for me.  It releases the tension that builds up inside me.  Words that I write clarify my thoughts and help me to reflect upon what I have learned from an experience.  The hardest words that I have ever written was a piece that I wrote entitled "Proof of Life" that I wrote after my father's passing in 2010.  I cried and cried throughout my time writing it, yet with that grief and sorrow, I was healing and learning, and most importantly honoring his memory.  I still cry when I read it, but now, I also smile a bit because I can feel essences of my father's personality and spirit shining through my words.  I hope that one day I can share it and maybe, just maybe, my experiences can help someone else during their time of need. 

     I have to say that of all of the quotes that I have collected, the words I obtained from reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand affected me the most.  I read the book at a time when I was rebuilding my life and my spirit after a very trying time in my life.  In reading Ayn's words and learning about her characters I absorbed pieces of her work into the very fiber of my being.  The one phrase that lifted me up the most is:

           "It was as if he had run a race against his own body, and all the exhaustion of years, which he had refused to acknowledge had caught up   with him at once and flattened him against the desk top.... He had burned everything there was to burn within him, he had scattered so many sparks to start so many things - and he wondered whether someone could give him the spark he needed, now when he felt unable to ever rise again.  He asked himself who had started him and kept him going.  Then he raised his head.  Slowly, with the greatest effort, he made his body rise until he was able to sit upright with only one hand pressed to the desk and a trembling arm to support him.  He never asked that questioned again" (Atlas Shrugged p 45-46).

     Those words moved me, and whenever I feel myself broken down and wanting to give up on this world, I read those words and my engine restarts.  I feel strong enough and capable enough to deal with anything that life can, and usually will, throw at me. 

     In reading Atlas Shrugged with Ayn's voice echoing into the recesses of my mind, my perspective of myself and the world around me was utterly changed.  Her words, her message, became a part of my outlook of life and help me almost every day to be a better, stronger, and more capable woman.  Ayn's words also inspired me to want to write so that hopefully my words can influence someone else.  They are my inspiration and a source of my fire, my passion, and my love.  

    I will close with the words that most changed my life, "that your work is the purpose of your life... any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can only be travelers you chose to share your journey and must be travelers going on their own power in the same direction.