The Beauty of a Blank Page - Guest Blogger

The Beauty of a Blank Page

How often is a blank page better than one filled with words? It's clean, simple, and innocent. As words begin to fill the page, layers and folds appear. Each word carries a distinct idea and when joined to others, those ideas form doctrines, ideologies. They form statements that contain the potential with the proper influence to alter the course of history.

As an author, politician, journalist, or teacher pens down his heart, when he offers up his soul, depth appears. The two dimensional surface of a single piece of paper, stamped with black ink ignites one's mind, sets in motion a will to act, at times rationally, and at other times emotionally. From a single article, poem, or book our entire world could be won. Or lost.

In our post-modern culture, nothing remains as it seems. Everything is wide open to individual interpretation. No longer does the supreme law of the land express what the framer's wrote. Instead, we're told it is a “living” document. The support for the idea that the U.S. Constitution continues to evolve and transcend its literal meaning grows exponentially as the document itself ages, literally changed only by the effects of nature.

In its simplest terms, today, we are told to believe that truth can no longer be true. It's like a sasquatch – an animal in which only crazy people believe, but could have possibly roamed the earth many years ago. Any day now, I expect to be told that my right hand is really my left because that is the way it appears to the person standing in front of me.

No longer does the Bible say what God intended it to say, but it says what we want it to say. And, if by some weakness of constitution in our own reasoning, or truly fool-proof, indisputable logic by the author, we can't make it say what we want it to say, we simply change it. Don't believe me? Research, but don't buy, the new “Princess Diana Bible.” (Typing those words actually hurt. I am resolved to never do it again.) Even its title belies the general acceptance of the King James Bible. Its – the new faux-Bible's authors have tried to amend natural history itself by making their version state that God made “Aida” first, then by taking out one of her ribs fashioned “Eve.” I haven't found out about the origin of men, and I honestly don't care to know. Sometimes, only sometimes, a closed mouth is better than one unleashing a torrent of enraged queries.

Therefore, when is it that a blank page is better than one filled with words? It's better when facts are ignored and give way to dishonest theorization. I opine that when facts are taken out with the trash and substituted for personal or political agendas, the page would be better left unmolested. No, I don't advocate book burning or stifling of free speech. I have a problem with free lies. I advocate stifling them. Admittedly, I have a problem with a lie offered as truth. Think with me for just a moment. The beauty of the clean page or blank canvass is its simplicity – it's chastity, if you will. But, the tragedy of the same is its defenselessness.

Written by Michael Andrzejewski for The LaGrange Daily News, Monday December 15, 2008