I bought a physical dictionary. It slows me down, makes me pause, alerts me to looking beyond the screen and the pathways to understanding laid by a gazillion others on the interweb. Returns me to a deliberate expression of agency as an embodied act of inquiring, rather than the frantic search for something that leads to something else beyond the point of what sent me looking.
I used to have a physical dictionary, many in fact, beloved ones. Then the internet came along. And my attempts to be austere and live with less. But how could I live with less when it comes to words? I could, but life and my vocation would feel impoverished, even though in reality, it would make no difference.
I bring this up because I went looking for the meaning of rhetorical. I think I know, of course, but it’s interesting to see, in relation to the question – why write? A question I ask myself often and look to other writers for their answers.
Rhetorical, from the Oxford dictionary: “asked for effect or to make a statement rather than to obtain an answer.” A half truth as to my why for posing it. There is no definitive answer to the question why in many contexts. It’s mostly relative, contextual and personal.
I write for many reasons, personally and professionally speaking. Primarily, for the stimulating process and the life-affirming practice of finding the sense in things.
“Why write? Because we cannot simply live.” Patti Smith
Like leafing through the pages of a dictionary instead of drumming the keys of my laptop, it slows me down, makes me wonder, causes me to think my way through confusion towards less confusion, if not clarity, to sift through the mud, to make the water in the lake of my mind a little clearer.
I scrawl my way untidily across pages because I enjoy it. Not always, especially not when I start, but much like my other practices for living, I know it’s good for me.
Doubt and resistance are the sludge in the ground that needs to be felt and acknowledged before sifting and marching right through it. The burden of expectation and the patterned belief that it has to mean something, be good, be worthy, be true, be perfect, needs to be seen for what it is – a delusion, so the process can be grappled with and grasped.
I write because I like to fill pages, to make marks, to feel the ink leave the pen as marks become words become sentences. What a magical thing it is to conjure and create for the sheer, profound simplicity of being able to!
I like the satisfaction and the freedom of the act itself, the private encounter that has no objective or timeline other than the one I set myself, to sit for repeated stretches of 10 to 15 minutes and commit to keep the pen moving without scratching out or correcting as I go.
The practice gives me structure while also loosening me up. It holds me steady while allowing me to move.
If I didn’t have a pen and paper, could I think my way through most things? I sometimes think no, how would I know what I think and feel if I don’t face it on the page? It’s a need as much as a compulsion and the proverbial itch I have to scratch. Like my lips that could likely survive without the balm I constantly apply but would be less pleasant if I didn’t.
"In daily life we're disconnected from ourselves. We're alive but we don't know that we're alive. Throughout the day, we lose ourselves. To stop and communicate with yourself is a revolutionary act." Thich Nhat Hanh
If I don’t get them out, the thoughts keep swirling and churning around like a broken record. To release them is to excavate their gripping force on the mind, which allows me to make space and quite literally, breathe easier for the fact of being freer.
Getting the words out forces me out of my own way. Because the alternative would be to remain stuck in the loop, incessantly stumbling over what I refuse to work through.
I write because I like to play with words, to face my limitations in my handle on what will never be enough of them. Hence the dictionary.
I write because I always wanted to, always did, ever since I was around 5 and would put letters together on a page and ask my parents to tell me what word I’d come up with (nonsense, obviously).
I have stacks of notebooks piled behind my friends on the shelves whose works have inspired, enthralled and guided me over the years. Behind them sit my catalogued journals, for neatness and humility.
I write because I love to and I care. It’s as simple as that.
As frustrating as that. As easy and as challenging. And yet so many of us make it more complicated than it needs to be. It’s not always our fault. We were raised that way.
I see this in some of the professional work I do, where the strain to be (seen as) clever stains the work and practically renders it pointlessly incomprehensible. Where convoluted sentences, overburdened with lengthy words threaten to exhaust a reader to the point of turning them away. Or where fear of being misunderstood or judged as less than smart prevents a word from even being laid down.
I’ve done that myself in the past. I look at a handful of the essays I’ve kept from my university years studying philosophy, and see myself contending with such questions as ‘what is time’ and ‘what is god’, with attempts so wordy and desperately trying to be worthy that they clog up my throat and stomach with confusion and compassion for my former self.
It doesn’t need to be so hard or dense, as I’ve realised in the years since. Which makes me glad to assist others to make it easier, to make sense, to help people be read, heard, noticed and seen for what they really mean.
It makes a huge difference to how we relate, how we perceive, how we see, how we feel. Words matter. They can be and often are inadequate, falling short and causing us to stumble, but they are what we have and when used well, can light the way.
“Cleverness tries to devise craftier ways of making pegs fit where they don’t belong. Knowledge tries to figure out why round pegs fit into round holes, but not square holes. Wu Wei doesn’t try. It doesn’t think about it. It just does it. And when it does, it doesn’t appear to do much of anything. But Things Get Done.” Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh
I often wonder, why do we make things harder than they need to be? A question as a prompt to do differently rather than get stuck in the murk of figuring it out. Though figuring out is what we have a tendency to do, as humans, as writers. My personal approach is to care a little, just enough, but not so much that the hope or fear stops me.
Which is why I like to amend, correct, alter and adjust the struggled expressions of others when asked – and sometimes when not, I’ll judge and reframe out of frustration and compulsion, because, well, that’s how I am and it’s what I do. There’s a satisfaction in picking things apart and making them clearer, better, heartier and gutsier. To transform obfuscation and obscurity into sense and clarity.
To recompose for the purpose of understanding. Otherwise, why bother? The world is full of verbiage and garbage, why add to the load unless it somehow helps, whether in the privacy of one’s own notebook or a more public declaration?
What about you? Why do you do what you do? Why don’t you do it when you want to, if indeed you do yearn to? What stops you? Why do you let yourself be stopped?
Questions, questions. Not rhetorical, though maybe a little. Share if you feel called to do so, without second-guessing yourself. Share from the heart, as we say in Dharma circles. Or simply consider for yourself.
There is no right answer, believing there is is what stops us prematurely short. There is only what we find if we dare to look, with pen in hand or otherwise.
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