I write because the world doesn't make sense, how about you?
Living Happy
A long while ago, my graduate school had blog for its MFA program and on it someone wrote about why they write when they know they'll never get enough money to pay bills, etc...
Her reasons were interesting and somewhat inspiring, but her reason had nothing to do with why I write. And I write a lot. I wrote news stories for basically no money. I write massive editorial letters to the writers I work with. I write poems and novels and things like these—blog posts.
So, I pretty much don’t stop writing.
Here is why I write:
I write to make sense of things. I write because I want to believe that lives are part of a bigger picture, a bigger connection, and because it's the only way I can dig deep into the meaning of the stuff that goes on. It’s my process for thinking more deeply.
I guess I think of all writing like a poem, a way to get to the universal through the specific. Maybe? I don't know.
Back in 2006, ages and ages ago, I know! But back in 2006, two people I knew and liked died. One was a little, older lady named Mrs. Blanche Clark who used to live next door to me. On 9/11 she and her husband and all the neighborhood families gathered outside with candles. She had a lung disease and couldn't be near the candles and she kept moving so she could be downwind. The wind kept changing. She kept adapting. She wanted so badly to be there and she was. She was beautiful.
We offered to blow out the candles and stand there in the dark with her instead and she said, “No. No, the light is what is important.”
The other person, was a boy really, Benny. He was in his early twenties, barely younger than me. He used to be a high school star athlete, got addicted to heroin, then recovered, straightened out and got engaged, got religion, got a lot of things really. He was a spark plug guyy, always lighting up rooms.
His dad worked at an assisted living center on the third shift. Benny was keeping him company until 2 a.m. and then Benny headed home in his 2001 Pontiac. He hadn't put his seatbelt on yet, had just turned out of the center onto the main road when a lady with a super high blood alcohol content smashed into him from behind. His body was in the backseat when the firefighters came and cut him out. I hate that. I hate the thought that his body went backward when Benny had finally gotten his life to go forward.
I can't make super sense of it all. But that's why I write. Because I'm trying to, I guess. Benny and Blanche have both shown up in so many of my stories in so many ways. Blanche was one of the key inspirations for Grandma Betty in my Need series.
In a 2020 article in Cognition Today, Aditya Shukla writes,
“We seek meaning. We seek certainty. We seek explanations. Meeseeks purpose. People want to make sense of the world on almost every level of experience. David Eagleman, in his book “Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain[1],” said, “Instead of reality being passively recorded by the brain, it is actively constructed by it.” This construction is our sense-making ability.
“Looking through the scientific lens[2] is a way of making sense of the universe. Naive psychology students who observe other people to pin-point their personalities is another example. When we tell others why we did something in the past and explain it retroactively, it is sense-making. Relying on astrology to explain negative life events is sense-making. Sense-making is particularly prominent in justifying and explaining uncontrollable bad & confusing events. People use spirituality, religion, cosmic powers, karma, etc. to reconcile negative events that make no sense to them. Even reading is sense-making. Viktor Frankl, in his book Man’s Search For Meaning, wrote, ‘Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any “how.”’”
So, why do you write?
Fun? Spite? Boredom? Love? Because you are chained to your laptop? Because someone once told you that you were a good writer (and I am sure you are)? Why?
And if you don’t write, what do you do to try to make sense of things? What are the ways that you make things make sense?
SOME COOL LINKS
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/211395920_Organizing_and_the_Process_of_Sensemaking
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268115002838
This is quite the powerful line. 🙌.
I hate the thought that his body went backward when Benny had finally gotten his life to go forward.
I love those details of those two people, sad a story as they are but I can almost picture exactly the person they were and why they meant so much to you. You certainly make sense of the world to me Carrie. I appreciate your writing so much.