Language a Tool of Expression – Thoughts and Feelings Associated with its Use

My native language is Greek but from time to time I feel the urge to express my ideas and emotions in English, a language that is usually associated with my technical writing and academic studies. When I choose to start writing in English, I generally find great difficulties in expressing meaningful things I would feel proud of and often suffer from writer’s block. The truth is I am never comfortable with writing even in my native language. This maybe attributed to a personal lack of writing skills, the fear of making embarrassing grammatical mistakes and most importantly the fear of being misunderstood or sounding offensive to others. All these insecurities portray a weak and rather fearful character that I hate to believe it describes me.

The power of language as a tool of expression has never seized to amaze me. I often get emotional by reading other people’s work not necessarily due to its content but due to the way it is expressed. Written language when used appropriately can become a form of art and exert emotions we never thought pragmatically it would. I envy those that have the ability to captivate an audience through their words. Their ability is a sign of a charismatic personality and empowers them to do great things.

Is this ability attributed to a natural talent or is it primarily a product of education and systematic practice? This fundamental question has been torturing me for years. I feel extremely disappointed with myself for not having it answered.

In my mind I have glorified the great masters of the language, famous politicians, writers, poets and modern philosophers, and I have tried to unsuccessfully to imitate their style and language structure. Maybe this effort is doomed to fail since they were trying to convey grant things and I only merely to convey my personal thoughts and feelings. One may argue there is nothing grant about the latter and therefore the end-result will always be lacking. One may also argue that if you try too much, you overcomplicate things and your words loose the beauty of simplicity. The low significance of my ideas demands that I remain as minimalistic as possible; however the complexities and confusions associated with my personal thinking process drive me towards the opposite direction. The latter ambiguity compromises the purity in expressing my thoughts.

I conclude my thoughts with a wish that the next time I write in this space I will do so in a more simplistic and interesting manner.

P.S.

Maybe things are not so bad, maybe I am being oversensitive. It is difficult to tell. However I am almost certain that discussing it will do no harm.