Why Write
“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” —Joan Didion
Why do I write? Well, why do anything to expend energy into an activity for no immediate reward? At this moment, I’m entering a forbidden place. I should not explore through the medium of writing.
Whether blogging or poetry or using that leather-bound notebook. By discovering the true nature of thoughts. Unlike George Orwell, I didn’t consider literary ambitions beyond mere words; I found the power of writing later in life. Thus, with time, I get to explore by writing what lies in the inward eye and piece together the puzzle in my psyche.
An opportunity to voice my journey as I navigate life with a dynamic map and a scribbled notebook. At the same time, I take notes along the way to distill the wisdom found in different disciplines and schools of thought against my judgment. I’ll meditate on the collective knowledge and experience to scribe a handbook to living a good life.
There is a universal trope we all share, and we create as authors or readers in fictional worlds filled with characters with distinct personalities and motivations. Our symbolic language makes humanity unique apart from animals, nature, and everything else.
“Symbolic language is a language in which inner experiences, feelings and thoughts are expressed as if they were sensory experiences, events in the outer world. It is a language which has a different logic from the conventional one we speak in the daytime, a logic in which not time and space are the ruling categories but intensity and association.” —Erich Fromm. The Forgotten Language: An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales, and Myths
Thus, exploring this concept of human nature and symbolic language allows us to imagine a world in dreams and act out those desires, in reality, helps guide us to living a virtuous life by asking:
- What is human nature and its relation to the symbolic language?
- How can we better understand it through literature and art?
- Are we good or evil, or both?
- Can we find a satisfying answer from the disciplines of evolutionary biology, psychology, and other fields of science?
- How can studying mythology, philosophy, and religion inform our moral decision-making in daily life? How can we with the knowledge gained help curb the darker side of human nature that impairs our judgment?
- Exploring history can teach us more about modern trends and not repeating the errors of the past.
- Reading, researching, and reflecting on various writing topics helps us think more critically and creatively. It also serves to inspire generations of writers to write in their genres.
When we reflect on why we behave in certain ways or process a specific belief that conflicts with reality or with others. I sometimes ask why the mind is wrought with fear, guilt, and shame; at other times, filled with joy, euphoria, or spontaneity. When I look at various ideologies, they all sound great on paper. Still, when you recognize the nuances of human nature, those campaigns fail to succeed.
The Impetus
That led me to walk on this path, I found myself confronting both my past self and my growing self. Once childhood innocence waned, I woke up in a strange, brutish, and indifferent world to what I felt was strange, brutish, and indifferent to me. To imagine I was living with the lie that lay behind ignorance? I did not believe before that childhood upbringing played a significant role in the way it shapes our worldview.
The moment I noticed it, I became hungry for knowledge to help me better understand myself: my biases, fallacies, insecurities, fears, anxieties, and reality; also, people’s motivations, desires, goals, and their overall philosophy as we travel through these landscapes that many before us have walked.
I recognize why I appreciate literature and art, whether it’s books or video games. These mediums speak to our personal lives, shed light on the human condition, and how life can seem like a maze full of obscurity. The more I uncover, the more questions I raise. The more dots I’ve connected, the more painful revelations surface.
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” —Joseph Campbell
From childhood to adulthood, I’ve seen the many challenges and wounds I’ve carried manifest in unhealthy behaviors. I kept suppressing my distorted reality with distractions like finding comfort in romantic relationships and excessive ego-driven habits such as: partying on the weekend, playing video games, and using social media.
In moderation, these activities are fine. Yet, I was caught in a web of overthinking (paralysis—analysis). With the constant escape from reality, I developed a habit of impulsive behavior, and I returned to these comforts. At the same time, the wounds continue to gnaw in the subconscious.
In my late 20s, it finally culminated as simultaneous events collided at once, pushing me past the threshold guardians. Between the years 2013 through 2015. I’ve adopted a nihilistic worldview brought upon by the growing unease day after day. I was stuck in victimhood. I blamed everyone else, taking almost no responsibility for my own actions. I lashed out at people trying to be supportive and fabricated a persona I knew in my soul was not genuine.
- Despite the call for action, I never summoned the courage to discover the hidden wisdom. Like a protagonist in a fantasy world, when something disrupts their way of life, they are inexperienced or naïve to perceive it.
- When we venture into the unknown, wisdom awaits on the other side; we can discover the ingredients to live a fulfilling life and trust in those who will support us in our journey, regardless of what obstacles, or challenges, present themselves, whether they’re inner or outer forces.
In the longest passage of solitude, my thoughts were wrought with fear, insecurities, and hopelessness. I was one hell of an actor because people rarely noticed. Gradually, I began looking within with compassion, challenging my worldview and what my environment was lecturing me. Then confronting and healing old wounds and seeking answers to many questions I’ve had over the years but neglected to explore the dark cave of revelations.
The shift began when an innate feeling that kept poking, and I surmised something was missing. The first thing that came to mind was exploring my passions. I was still determining if I could make a career out of it and if it would resonate with me long enough to endure.
I excavated clues from my childhood. I’ve read countless books and articles and taken various personality tests. Honestly, I didn’t even know who I was or what the word “self” meant. I dabbled with drawing, painting, graphic design, web design, web development, and branding.
I muse over the idea of starting a startup with a friend, becoming a lifestyle blogger, or a video game designer. Then there it was, smack in the face, yet I could not put the pieces together. Now that I look back, it is quite evident that writing is a lifestyle.
The clues were stacked away in boxes and burned onto DVD discs. I had a collection of poems and stories that collected dust over the years, while hundreds upon hundreds of journal entries, either enclosed in a paperback notebook or hidden from sight on Google Drive—the answer was right in front of my nose.
“We must let go of the life we have planned. So as to accept the one that is waiting for us.” —Joseph Campbell
Why Writing
The writing was an outlet to help me make sense of the universe. It’s therapy to assess and dissect emotions and much more; it’s a tool to:
- Construct strategies and challenge arguments.
- Craft narratives and assess the character’s motivation.
- Create fantastical worlds and mythologies.
- Unfurl the imagination where reality can’t meet expectations.
- Take a character on a journey and watch how their development unfolds when faced with challenges and conflict
- Craft poetry to take raw ideas and emotions and poetically condense them in a few chosen words that speak volumes.
- and use the techniques of writing to give ideas substance.
The power of writing reveals the psyche of human nature in nuanced ways. We, humans, suffer from a consciousness-derived psychological condition rather than an instinct-controlled animal condition. We are burdened with what we must bear and strive to understand, seeking solace in different disciplines to lessen the bluntness of dreadful thoughts.
As a writer, it’s an exercise to challenge my political attitude. For serious writers drafting their own stories, are you being guided under a political bias that steers your everyday life to enter private echo chambers for the selfish interest of your tribe or are you open with different perspectives that challenges your belief that the world isn’t as black and white as you believed?
The power of writing offers us the ability to not only slay our dragons but also explore the beauty and complexity of reality by crafting our own stories in the direction we want to take by meeting our wish fulfillment. Writing aims to provide insight that makes a more robust understanding of the world and our human condition. Also, what insights can we glean from history’s greatest thinkers by reading their interpretations in their respective areas.
We could model our lives in stages by borrowing Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, the monomyth to step outside the ordinary world into the unknown that holds tremendous potential. While coupling that journey by studying the insights found in philosophy, mythology, biology, psychology, and literature. The manuscripts we write are drafts of future possibilities guiding each scene of our lives. We imagine these fictional worlds in dreams with superpowers to deal with everyday challenges and pursue goals, using magic as a tool to affect the world.
“Believers re-enacted a myth in the form of a ritual in the hope or expectation of magically effecting change in the world.” -Neel, Burton. The Meaning of Myth: With 12 Greek Myths Retold and Interpreted by a Psychiatrist (Ancient Wisdom)
I’ve made progress with every journey I stumble and reflect upon; however, I’m far from perfect since our evolutionary biology is waging a power struggle with consciousness. I’ve grown up with a narrative that distorted the truth. I’ve learned we must curb our ego while struggling to see the lie for what it is and define what is moral and ethical, then find a balance between the two.
We are nowhere near growing away from millions of years of evolution. Still, we can live with our contentions and embrace it. I believe all the information I have written serves as the backbone for what I want to accomplish with writing:
- Document my hero’s journey as an author.
- Share topics like research, readings, and writing tips and processes.
- How different schools of thought and disciplines are interwoven and can enhance our thinking through writing.
- How can we derive meaning from myths, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, movies, video games, etc. ways to convey them in our lives?
- Ultimately, this platform can serve as a source of wisdom for all to collaborate, whether for entertainment or ideas to help draft your own handbook to living a good life.
“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” —Joseph Campbell
How will I convey the message?
The symbolic language of art is the medium to convey the meaning behind human nature and shed light on its various themes to share the wisdom or truth about reality. Learning from different disciplines of study can help you draft your own handbook for living a good life.
Furthermore, understand how our environment shapes our worldview and the compassion required to curb our demons while negotiating with the desires of others. To become wholesome, we must embrace our light and shadow; we can accomplish this through poetry or by observing how fictional characters resolve challenges in their hero’s journey.
“The adventure evoked a quality in his character that he didn’t know he possessed.” —Joseph Campbell
Theme
“Leverage Human Nature to maximize ‘The Art of Living’.”
Disclaimer: I’m not claiming to be an expert or prescribing anything but summarizing essential points with each post, and these are my opinions through research, observation, and experience.
The Art of Living can help us to refine our notions of reality and how to navigate it so we can find a meaningful purpose in the objective world surrounded with others in how they navigate and interpret reality. We can study and extract wisdom from art such as: myths, novels, short stories, verses, and narrative-driven video games to draw out the themes of the human condition that plagues us all and provide us with the practical wisdom to navigate reality and craft a handbook to living a good life.
I know I have mentioned human nature several times throughout, so here is a definition:
“Human nature is a bundle of characteristics, including ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, which humans are said to have naturally. The term is often regarded as capturing what it is to be human or the essence of humanity.”
A brief definition of a concept is still highly debated across several disciplines. Humans seek to identify our place in the universe and ask deep philosophical questions to debate the right actions we should take as individuals and as societies. This is what it means to be human.
Disciplines of Study
Mythology
The study of myths. Myths are sacred stories. They tell of the world’s creation, the emergence of gods and the first men and women; the adventures of heroes and the audacity of tricksters; the nature of heaven and the Underworld; and what will happen when time ends.
Every human culture has its own myths passed on from one generation to the next – source. These sacred stories helped our ancestors find their place in the universe and answered big-picture questions about why it’s still valid. Why myths are incredible and how we can use them.
Evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology
For our ancestors, the environment has molded our evolutionary path, and studying under these disciplines helps guide our actions. Touching on topics found within our nature such as fear and anxiety were adaptive features of evolution. They can still be helpful sometimes, but humans are prone to exaggeration, biases, and fallacies that magnify these adaptive qualities.
Also, asking: what’s up with the mind, emotion, and behavior? Evolution of genetics and neural systems, and why they’re still in conflict. How much do culture and civilization play a role in how we think, feel, and interact with others?
Philosophy
Is asking what is good? Aspects of morality and ethics. What is true? How do we know what we know? What is truth in the perception of an individual’s reality? The spectrum of rationality and emotionality. How values and virtues are sometimes distorted by false beliefs. Also, why don’t we talk about mortality at the dinner table? How a society organizes itself, and the significance of a shared philosophy, history, and culture?
Writing and Reading
Writing creatively helps us meld words in our minds and infuse life into them. How can we find inspiration from the literary works of others and uncover the theme or meaning in stories? As we travel through a fictional character’s trials and tribulations, do they return home with the elixir, or do they forgo it in favor of a different desire? How the beauty of poetry can speak to raw emotions or themes within a topic and make it memorable.
The Gist
“The adventure of the hero is the adventure of being alive.” —Joseph Campbell
If you made it this far, thank you; this is why I write. My unquenchable curiosity is a different monster I must appease since this is a massive endeavor. So, I think it’s worth the effort. Not only will I learn, but I will also learn how much more I don’t know. That sounds like a lifetime journey, and I’m excited to embark on it. It’s human nature, after all.
Remember, each day of your life is a short story, and why not take deliberate control in writing a book of those stories? There’s nothing self-centered about it; if anything, it expands your worldview; your life is a work of art. The infinite power you hold as a narrator of your story, where words matter and see through the useless information that bombards us daily, makes all the difference in the art of living.
To summarize the essential points:
- What the hell is human nature, and what can we learn from its evolutionary path from the varied disciplines and schools of thoughts?
- Is human nature really at the core of our problems between the good and evil that afflicts the human species, and can we learn to embrace this contention’s dual nature, the Yin and Yang.
- How can we learn to live a life with intention with the knowledge from our discoveries throughout the journey as we reflect.
- Explore philosophy to find truth in a world with different opinions and how sophistry use of language distorts that truth.
- Explore the stories in myths, fiction, and poetry to help us identify our place in the universe and unravel the phenomenon of the human condition.
- Also, how does society shape our ability to find purpose and meaning (rites of passage or initiation)? Are we really pursuing the feeling of being alive? What metaphorical truth can we glean?
- Writing is a tool to slay our demons and dragons; while giving life through stories from anecdotes, fiction, poems, and myths.
- The importance of history is to not repeat the mistakes of the past and convey lessons to help us how we can apply them to our lives.
- Besides documenting my hero’s journey, I’ll use my writing voice to share what I learn from my experiences and studies.
“Nothing perishes in the whole universe; it does but vary and renew its form.” —Joseph Campbell
