What Would Happen if You Lost Your Computer?

(Spoiler. You would be fine.)

Let’s imagine ourselves as characters in a fable.

We receive a magic gourd from a demigod. This magic gourd has incredible storage properties. It can store far more than appears physically possible. We pour our memories, our thoughts, our hopes, our pictures from hikes into this gourd.

Bit by bit, the gourd, because of its undeniable magic, seems to be more powerful than us. We are forgetful. We are slow. The gourd is unfailingly swift. It forgets nothing. If you cannot find something in the gourd, it’s because you stored it incorrectly.

Gradually, the gourd seems to have outgrown its initial use. As time passes and we internalize that we are frail and the gourd is unfailing, the gourd takes over us. We feel as though we are nothing without the gourd. It is the best version of us. It is more us than us.

One day, you leave your magic gourd on the bus.

You may be devastated. Especially if you have forty thousand words of a novel that you have a deadline for and no backup of. And after moping and complaining to your friends, you may discover something.

The computer is an empty vessel without us. It is a repository of ourselves. A mirror. That’s all. And everything that was poured into it came from you. You can do it again. It will take time. It will take energy. But you have not lost the Word of God. There’s plenty that can be recovered from the hard drive of your heart.

For writers, you may discover that re-writing previously written material from memory improves the quality immeasurably. You retain the vital.

Will you lose a lot of useful stuff? Absolutely.

But you have gained resilience. You will not let things subsume you. You are the author of your things.

But save us all the trouble, and be a little more careful disembarking from the bus.

Written by Raghav Rao

Illustration by Sophie Lucido Johnson

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Office of Modern Composition is a Chicago-based writing studio that both makes compositions and fosters composers. We offer one-on-one coaching for writers and also take on commissions for things you need to have written. We also offer free events like our in-person and online co-writes.