Jan 31

Written by: albigen
1/31/2009 7:58 PM

So why do people write, anyway? – If this isn’t just a subset of the great unanswerable question, Why do people do what people do?

Jim Burns (it’s always handy to quote an authority) has always told us the importance of sorting out whatever is chewing at us on the inside. I’d encourage anyone to keep a journal - and hey, you can always post it at Albigen.Net.

Today it hit me while looking over some of my notes from last weekend on Paracelsus: “How could I be so presumptuous? I wrote this as if pretending I know what I’m talking about?” The contrast between states of mind was alarming. But 10 minutes later, back into the book, the reality of the world in front of me changed abruptly, and I wondered about the foolishness in how I spent the past 5 weekdays occupied with business and material things.

If the stock market would only reverse its downward vector, probably the entire country would be in a better mood. But maybe there’s opportunity in a crisis, in this case the opportunity to observe the state of anxiety in all its glory and see for a few moments how useless it can be.

So after a calm Saturday, here are some reasons why it’s helpful to write:

First, it’s an actual concrete step, even an action, a commitment made to create some momentum, to build the vector. It forces the mind to focus, to stop wandering. The intent is to examine what is going on inside and then communicate it in a clear manner. It helps to clarify individual issues, or at least to make a start. So instead of twelve swirling storm clouds inside me I have eleven clouds and a small patch of blue. That's big.

Some other aspects of writing:

• It allows me to identify thoughts I've been concealing, maybe even from myself, and put them out in the open for all to see, which gives me an extent of freedom from them.
• Maybe I (and maybe you, if you start writing) will help somebody else. If I can expose some crap & corruption in myself and later overcome it, maybe somebody else will believe that they can do so also.
• If I can identify factors which are common denominators among all of us, then that is part of ladder work. Sometimes my beef with the other guy is a reflection of something I don’t like in myself.
• If despite my best efforts I unconsciously communicate some of my own weaknesses, this might be a signal to the other guy of how he might be able to help me.

But the bottom line: Writing has to communicate. It doesn’t do the writer any good to create a bunch of verbiage, and nobody wants to read that anyway.

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