If I Wasn’t a Writer …

by Joe Luca

I finally read the Sherry McGuinn challenge and thought … why not.

If I wasn’t a writer, I would be someone else. My eyes would still be brown, but they’d be less focused, less observant and interested in the world around me. My mouth would be smaller and less clearly defined, for I would not have spent year after year talking and asking questions and pondering where the beginning and end is of anything meaningful in this world.

My head, no doubt would be smaller as well. Less symmetrical, pear-shaped perhaps, because the brain inside would not have tried so often to outgrow the skull. Pushing against it, searching for weaknesses so that it could expand outward into a world that was forever fascinating and frightening at the same time.

And I would be shorter — by several inches at least. For I would not have spent a lifetime constantly stretching my neck ever higher to see just beyond the fringe. Looking for something, someone to drive my curiosity to greater heights. I would be average.

If I were not a writer, I would have shed far less tears, for I wouldn’t have cared nearly as much. Wouldn’t have wished or prayed nearly as hard to see everything, feel everything and be in the middle of a world that I could do something about.

I wouldn’t be as strong or able to withstand the changing winds, for I would not have spent as much time, testing others, challenging the status quo, and being ruthless towards my own mediocrity, that at times, found its way into my way of thinking.

Nor would I be as happy, for the words that I have learned and bled and used to construct a well-earned life would not be there. To remind me of who I am and what I stand for.

No, if I wasn’t a writer, I would definitely be someone else. A likable fellow no doubt. Perhaps more fashionably dressed, a tidier person and one less focused on people and the world around me and a little more focused on myself. More conservative and less liberal. More outspoken, but probably saying less that’s important. A student of politics, but from the school of — if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it, with a degree in, I Just Don’t Care.

If I wasn’t a writer … well, no point in asking any further. I am one, and there it is.