On Writing

An unlikely call to action; an explanation

I recognize that this will be filed under the most dreaded of Substack articles - "writer writes about why writing is good." However, the reason for my doing this is twofold. First, I have many friends who need encouragement to write, who I believe have good writing within them. This piece is dedicated to them. Secondly, I am only publishing this Substack at all because of this conviction - not the other way around. This, therefore, is ideally both a call to my friends to begin writing themselves, and an explanation of why I'm writing, too.

Recently, I read an article by Jared Henderson over at the excellent Substack Walking Away, entitled "Gatekeeping Ourselves." The primary point of discussion? The gradual decline of reading as a skill and a pastime in America. I, as an avid reader, found this article accurate and therefore depressing. The summary of the issues was especially striking:

In brief: reading is difficult, many students were failed in their educations, and many lower-effort forms of media exist. So, students don’t read. And it seems that few of them have found the beauty and joy of reading, and so they lack the desire to read as well.

Along with that, our culture has stopped valuing the art of writing. If one does not enjoy the act of reading itself, how can one appreciate the craftsmanship - for writing is a craft - of the great authors? My generation is completely missing what the Tolstoy's and the McCarthy's and the Endō's of the world have to say about the human condition, and this is a very sad state of affairs indeed.

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Much of my pre-university schooling was dominated by mathematics and science. This was not forced upon me; it is what I delighted in, and indeed I have continued down the road of mathematics for my degree. I was, however, also an avid reader as a child. My imagination would often run far into the night; leaping to catch up with Percy Jackson in his battles with the gods, or following in the footsteps of the world's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes. Many a night, I would get into bed with a book at 10pm, begin reading, look up, and it was 2am. I loved books.

But I hated writing.

I never understood the value of writing. Such an odd thing to say! Books were the soul of my upbringing, the food for my voracious imagination. Stories of great men, of great lives lived, of great myths which are yet true, impressed themselves on my mind. Yet, somehow, the connection was never formed between the act of writing and the act of reading. I fought against taking english classes during the latter days of high school: the sentence "What is the point of taking another writing class? I know how to write already" came out of my mouth innumerable times. Since then, I have experienced a complete turnabout in my thinking. I now believe that writing is not only a necessary skill for modern-day society, but that it is a necessary skill for life¹. Everyone should write.

This brings up the vital question. Why? Why must we write?

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The human spirit is a strange thing. It is capable of soaring high above the earth, or penetrating deep into the recesses of hell. The issue is that the human spirit, by itself, has no substance. In both the Old and New Testaments (and therefore in Ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek), the word used for spirit is the same as that used for wind. Who amongst us can grasp the wind? Qohelet uses "striving after wind" as a warning:

Ecclesiastes 4:6: Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind. (ESV)

The wind can do many things: it can blow down the mightiest of trees, swirl into a great and terrible tornado, but it cannot be bridled. We humans can harness it for power - think of the great wind farms of west Texas - yet the wind blows with no thought or care to humanity. We can only harness the power of the wind by giving it matter to use, to turn, to blow against. Likewise, humans are not only spirit. We are also flesh and bone. We have bodies. We exist concretely in the world, there is a body that is mine and a body that is yours, and they must be distinguished. The tools of man are things which can be grasped, held, used. If the human spirit is to reach the lofty peaks of wisdom, it must be given substance so that it may be more than smoke. This is done by writing.

Writing forces things to become concrete. When you write down your thoughts, you allow yourself - your spirit - to analyze them directly. Unfortunately, in making the movements of the soul concrete, there is naturally some loss, some imperfection. Writing can never perfectly capture that which you want to express. It must be done anyway. Would the Sistine Chapel be good for anyone if Michelangelo refused to paint it - refused because his work in the world would be imperfect compared to the work in his mind, his spirit?

Of most importance, I believe, is for every person to journal. Journaling forces your own soul to become substantive, to become real. Journaling will help you to see who you truly are; by forcing your spirit into substance, you will see both the glory and the ugly, the dark and the radiant. It is in your journal that you will find the workbench of the soul. Like any piece of craftsmanship or artistry, some parts will need more work than others. Recording your daily existence, your path through the great adventure we call life, will allow you to process it more concretely.

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All too often, the modern life is filled with anxiety. We are too connected; the connections leave us with many things to worry over. Journaling forces the world to shrink. In journaling, you let everything blow as the wind blows. Whatever remains after your spirit moves is that which is important, valuable - the chaff gets blown away, leaving only the real, the concrete, behind. Let the wind of your soul move the weight of your pen. As the pen moves, you will find that the world has shrunk to the infinitesimal corner that you happen to inhabit. When I am going about my day, my mind may wander to many things - the tragedies happening in the world that I have no control over, or the YouTube video I watched that was a complete waste of time. When I journal, however, my mind returns to that which is truly important in my life. It is only by finding out what is weighty, to you, that you will learn who you are. This is amongst the greatest charges any human has - the Socratic maxim, "Know thyself."

When you journal, you must (barring physical/medical constraints) write by hand if at all possible. Journaling is vital now especially because of the speed of modern life. Do you know who you are, where you are, when you are? Do you understand the context of the world that you're living in, of the things at play in your own mind? Or are you, like most of our society, constantly running the horse that is your brain at 120% speed? Journaling, writing by hand, makes you slow down. Precisely because our lives are a blur of motion, it is all the more imperative to take time every day to slow down and allow yourself to process the events of the day. A life poorly processed is a life poorly understood, and a life poorly understood is a life poorly lived.

Slowing down allows for quiet to come into existence, and as Qohelet reminded us, quiet is better than trying to bridle the wind. Part of why modern life is so quick is that we have millions of people vying for our attention every day. Doomscrolling for hours before bed represents a kind of mental loudness that keeps you from experiencing yourself without outside inputs. I know that for myself, whenever I fill my brain with 2am YouTube binge-watching, it is because I don't want to be alone with myself. I want to avoid reckoning with the movements of my soul; I want to direct the wind into "safer" waters. Consistent journaling helps me to avoid this trap.

The act of journaling creates a reflection. This is why journaling is so effective at giving self-knowledge - how can I know what I look like physically without a mirror? Just as a glass mirror shows me my physical appearance, my journal shows me my spiritual appearance. It is not, however, just myself that is captured in a journal. I inevitably capture my environment, my circumstances, the people around me; I am inescapably tied to where and when I am just as much as who I am.

Journaling not only benefits you in the immediacy of your writing it; it saves a record of you for the future. I hardly remember what I did 3 months ago, much less a decade ago. How much knowledge have I lost of my own life? Self-understanding requires not just an understanding of my present, but also of my history. Although I can hardly bear to read them, some of the most important journal entries I have are a scattered half-dozen from 2019. They are important because, although I did not realize it at the time, I was in a period of crisis. The wounds I suffered then have affected me deeply ever since, and finding those journal entries, although painful, has allowed me to receive healing. Who amongst us knows what will come after today? Who can know what will be useful for tomorrow's me to know? I know that I cannot know the future, thus I journal. Tomorrow, this day will be the past; the only way for me to retrieve it is through my own records.

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I am sure that some, reading the beginning of this work, were thinking, "But I have nothing of importance to say!" I am of the opinion that every human is unique, uniquely beautiful, and therefore has something unique to say to the world. Humans are crafted after God's image. No two of us are alike, therefore what God has to say through me is different from all others. It is only by self-knowledge, however, that you can know what it is you need to say. This is why journaling is of import.

Once you have a general grasp of who you are - no man fully knows himself, although we may hope to get close - you can know where you should start. What are you passionate about? What are the things that are valuable to you? What do you desire to change about the world? I know I experienced much trepidation and worry when I began to write. It is often quite difficult for people to enjoy writing during school, and this was no different for me. That stress and angst carried over, and once I understood the skill required to truly write well, I was intimidated by the project. Are my thoughts really important enough? Do I have enough to say?

This is precisely why writing is important.

Writing gets your thoughts out of your mind and into the world. By the very act of writing out your thoughts, you will discover what your thoughts are. You will see more easily their weaknesses, what needs to be shored up, and where you are already strong. If nothing else, writing topically is a furthering of the project of self-understanding. Forcing your thoughts to have substance allows you to hammer them out into better forms. I would encourage you, should you decide to start writing beyond journaling, to share what you write with those around you. For those in your life who love you, reading about what you have to say is often a great gift, because in your writing they see the reflection of you that you crafted.

Writing - be it blog posts, essays, books - is the oldest and best method of preserving your thoughts. It is only because of writing that we, in the 21st century, can come into contact with so many of the greatest minds of the centuries previous. How else could we watch Rome fall from within alongside Augustine, scribble diagrams in the dirt next to Euclid, or stare up at the moon with Newton? Most of us will not reach the lofty heights climbed by names such as these, but we all have our part to play. Is not a life fully lived the one which reaches its calling and its proper place? If even a single person, whether I am alive or dead, is impacted by my writing, and that is the level of my calling, then I will have succeeded. Who are we to know how God will use us in the future? All I can know is that God will honor my desire to honor him by my work - even if my work does not see the light of day until long after I have passed from the light of the sun into the true light.

Ecclesiastes 12:13: The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. (ESV)

1. This is therefore, in some sense, also an argument for worldwide 100% literacy. Knowing how to read and write, especially as a Christian, is something I think every human should be given the opportunity to receive.