Why We Write
I’ve been thinking about starting this medium as a way for me to scratch off from my list one of the items that comes up whenever I listen to Rex Orange County’s “Never Had the Balls”.
Half-kidding aside, I have been pondering ever since what to initially write about here. What should the first story be? Do I have to explain what this is all about? What would set the tone for everything I plan to publish here?
After finally concluding that none of my hidden writing pieces would fit the prompt (I mean, the titles “To the people who left us”, “What it’s like losing all your grandparents in one year”, and “Late to the party” speak for themselves as to why), of course I end up with the “why” of it all. Why even write this?
We all write different things and for various reasons, we write everyday. We write articles and reports on the different happenings in the world, messages to our friends detailing what we had for lunch, emails asking when the client’s next availability is, presentations showcasing the latest ups and downs of the company’s revenue charts. All of these make sense because they’re what’s required for work, for maintaining relationships, our jobs, but why write a piece on medium that maybe only a handful of people will read? Why even write creatively?
As the rational side of me obsesses over understanding anything and everything (or perhaps the philosopher in me as well), I’d like to hit two birds with one stone by answering my brain’s obsessive prompt and use this as a stepping stone to open this part of my life up. Allow me to share my thoughts as to why we write or better yet, why I am writing this.
Of course, it is typical of me to think “why we write” can be explained in three words:
1. Remembrance.
I think the human brain is flawed in its capacity to be able to remember details of our experiences. I remember reading once how the world is full of too many inputs that if our brain tried to absorb it all, either our heads would explode or we’d be in a perpetual state of processing information, frozen in all capacities. I like to think we write to be able to remember what we believe are the important things in our own lives. Sometimes, capturing these moments through writing comes out in the form of journal entries, others as poems or tweets that have this cryptic feel to them (I am personally guilty of writing poems). It’s as if in this magical yet linear plain of time, only our use of language through writing allows us to plant a flag with our names on a temporal checkpoint and say that for a specific moment, “I was here”.
But I realize we don’t just write to reminisce and recall. We write to remember and recall with the hopes that it can yield meaningful-
2. Reflection.
It is only by knowing where we came from that we are able to make more sense of our lives. Reflection itself means to take a look at oneself, but it also means to take a look in to one’s self. Be it the parts of our lives we don’t like to read or talk about out loud or the thrilling moments where we felt so alive, I think sometimes we write to be able to make sense of the happenings in our lives that haven’t made sense yet. This seems to be our healthier and direct response to a world that has way too many things going on.
I like to think our rationality needs us to write for the sake of maintaining its own sanity. For some reason, through this act of writing our thoughts and showing the way we’ve understood the happenstance of our lives, we’re able to have a clearer understanding of how we would answer the dreaded questions of “How are you doing?”, or “What’s your life story?”. We, some-way some-how, put to rest our existential dread just one day more by being able to comprehend the important parts of our lives. We need the important parts of our life to make sense because of the many things that sometimes don’t.
I personally think I write mostly to reflect upon both the pleasant and painful parts of my life. As you will see in my future posts, writing for me has become my best tool in being able to make sense of the parts of my life that never made sense.
Most of the time, I’m able to draw conclusions as to why things happen, able to determine the purposes of both the joyous and painful moments of my life, but what about the ones where I can’t?
What about the ones where no matter what I did, no matter the way I write about it, I can’t seem to still make sense of any of it?
That is where I believe the third reason why we write comes in:
3. Expression.
Sometimes the only thing left to do about the incomprehensible moments of our lives is to shout it out into the void. There is a unique experience of self-gratification that I believe unfolds in being able to say things out loud. I think that the comfort of saying things out loud does not discriminate between the positive and negative experiences that we are unable to understand. Being able to admit to such varying degrees of joy and pain help us make these moments real to ourselves, and in turn help us validate our experiences.
You may notice also that through expression, writing ends up helping us to remember too. These three reasons to write seem to be a self-sufficient cycle for our betterment because it is through expression that we are able to take ownership of the significant sensical and non-sensical moments of our lives.
Okay, yes, that’s “why we write”, but what about the question “why are you writing this”? Renzo, have you actually answered your own prompt?
Call me lazy, but after writing out all these thoughts, the only answer that came to my mind was:
Just because.
Dear reader,
I think your writing (mine too) doesn’t have to have a clear intention or purpose in mind. Your writing doesn’t have to have the goal of changing lives (Although I will encourage you if that’s what you want!). Your writing doesn’t have to derive insight from everything that you do and all that you’ve gone through.
I think that although we write to remember, reflect, and express, although all three reasons may share a cycle that directs toward the organization of both the sensical and nonsensical, each reason can stand on its own two feet. Sometimes writing can just be.
And I hope, here, in all that I share eventually, I may simply be.
