A World Spinning on Words

What if writing goes out of style? What if books become obsolete? What if one day, the last of the writers dies, and from then on, people just sit around and text and watch movies and talk? Maybe even handwriting will become extinct.

What if people forget how to write? What if imaginations get smaller and weaker until all people talk about are real events and the here-and-now?

What if novels are put in display cases in museums and people look at their covers and think, “Someone made up stuff and stuck it together with words for fun. Who does that? How weird.”

But you know what? I doubt that will happen. A lot of things have come and gone, but stories, words, and sharing have never faded. They’ve been around since the beginning of time. Humans have an innate desire to remember, create, discover.

I can’t imagine a world where words aren’t valued by a single person; a world where everyone goes around throwing out words that are “close enough;” a world where no one gets chills when words are put in a painfully beautiful order.

I think someone will always be writing.

But how much can be said, really? There are many words, but so many people, so much time. Will we ever reach a point where everything has been said? Will there come a point where every combination of words, every pattern, has been penned?

I don’t think so, but if that time does come, I think it will be time for the world to end; to quietly fold on itself in satisfied darkness, like a blanket. Tender, gentle, crisp finality will settle over the earth. When everything has been said, thought, experienced, loved, trusted, written, mocked, taught, and pleaded, what is left to live for?

The last written words would be like the final piece in a puzzle, or a dying man being forgiven, or lying down after a rough day.

Of course, if that time comes, it will be something new to write about, and someone will capture that moment and write it and keep the world spinning just a little bit longer.

~Stephanie