Editorial June 27, 1988 Issue

Expressing what means most

William E. Moody

When we experience something that has a special meaning to us, don't we often feel an urging to share it with others? Of course there are also those things that we simply want to cherish with quiet respect. And yet many times it seems that the sharing itself is what gives an experience a certain kind of legitimacy and life. It's as though if we can in some way have someone else grasp just how remarkable the thing actually is, then the importance of it becomes that much more real, more permanent. Someone understands.

But it isn't always easy to know what's needed to express something that has meant so much to us. We may question how we can ever actually convey the true intensity of what we've felt, or the beauty, or grace, or joy.

The contemporary writer Paul Theroux, in a piece written some twenty years ago, said that he felt fortunate not to have owned a camera in those early days. He explained: "Once, when I was in Italy, I saw about three dozen doves spill out of the eaves of an old cathedral. It was lovely, the sort of thing that makes people say if only I had a camera! I didn't have a camera with me and have spent the past two-and-a-half years trying to find the words to express that sudden deluge of white doves. This is a good exercise—especially good because I still can't express it. When I'm able to express it I'll know I've made the grade as a writer."^{Sunrise with Seamonsters (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1985), p. 15 .}

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