Why do I write?

A meditation on life

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Why do I write?

Why am I writing right now?

Because (this is so stupid) I feel called to it.

I wish there was another way of saying this, but alas, it feels most accurate to say that I feel called to write for the sake of itself. As an offering to God, perhaps, or the very fabric of reality from which I sprung, in which I live, to which I owe all my experiences and opportunities.

I am indebted to my own existence to do what it calls me to do.

Or something.

I write because I don’t know how else to better spend the time I’ve been given to do things. What a bad sentence. Let me try again. I write because to not write makes me sad. I write because it feels as though writing is Right for me.

But I am so tired of trying to justify it. I’m writing now to escape the need to justify myself in the future.

No.

I’m writing now about writing to get it out of the way.

No.

I’m writing now about writing, about the reasons I’m writing, about the why of spending time writing, about how I should be writing, or my deep motive — the justification — I’m writing about this because I haven’t been writing, and I want to fix it.

Not writing is a problem to be solved.
Not writing is an illness to be cured.
Not writing is a wound to be mended.
Not writing is an injustice to be rectified.
Not writing is a sin to be repented.
Not writing is a fear to be overcome.

Writing is the solution, the cure, the mend, the rectification, the repentance, the courage.

I am a writer. I often wish I wasn’t. I often wish the call would leave me be. I want to play games and watch TV. Hell, I want to scroll. I want to get caught up in the news cycles, have strong opinions about the latest election. And sure, I do. I get to do and have all those things. But must I do and have more than this? Must I respond to demands outside of these things?

To refuse the call of life is to die.

I don’t want to die. I want to live forever. And if I want to live forever, then I must forever answer the call of life.

OK.

But this invites that feeling. Regret? That feeling that uh-oh I have not answered the call. I have ignored the ring, the knock, the shout from afar, the whisper from behind, the pulsing light beckoning in the periphery.

Write...write...write...

I have said, OK, but not today.
I have said, not right now.
I have said, do I have to?
I have said, about what?

But the call so rarely comes with specifics.

Write. Just write. Just write. Just show up, sit down, and write.

What?!

You don’t get to know. Not until you show up.

Today, it’s all this introspective drivel. Well, that’s fair, I suppose. That’s the cost of doing business. That’s the cost of neglect. It must be paid. You can’t get around the costs. The pipes must be cleared. The pump must be primed. The garbage must be flushed from the system.

There are no shortcuts to inspiration. What a stupid thing to say. I don’t know if that’s true. It probably isn’t true.

What I do know, though, what seems immutable in my own life, is that if I neglect writing for long enough, I have to pay this cost. This cost of not writing well. Of spewing garbage. Of feeling blocked and frustrated and rusty and stupid, and of desperately explaining why it is so important that I SHOW UP ANYWAY.

I must follow the call of life, or I will die.

I must follow the call of life, or I will die.

I must choose life, or I will choose death.

I have tasted that death. It can be peaceful. I have tasted oblivion. It frightens me less than it used to. Life is, after all, so demanding. It wants feeling, and striving. It wants the continual acceptance of death, again and again, as each moment passes away, like a leaf shriveling on the vine behind the new one sprouting out with the undying wick of life.

There’s so little I know. Sometimes I am sure I know nothing at all. Sometimes I wonder if I remember any part of my life. Sometimes I am amazed that I can remember my own name, or the names of my wife, and my children.

It is so tempting to give up. It is so tempting to be tired enough that giving up becomes tempting. It is so tempting to tell the story of success or failure, and then to judge myself a failure.

I say tempting because of course it is a choice. In the business of comparisons, there is no absolute truth, and so one may choose the best fit for the ego. One may choose a faith in the story of death.

I am 39, weeks from 40, and I have wasted all my talents and potential. I am midlife! I have accomplished nothing of significance. I have made no dent in the world I inhabit. I live on borrowed time, borrowed money, doing borrowed work. The way things are cannot be sustained. The road to my own demise is short, and dark.

But why hold so tight the miserable half-truths that buttress the story of my own death? The fiction of my own failure?

So here is another:

Next week, I turn 40. In those years, I have raised a family, I have kept faith with my faith community, I have made things, written things, created things that other people have seen and loved. I have inspired some, been inspired by many. I have read much, watched much, listened much. I have sought and obtained many pleasures. I have produced many pleasures for others. I have done battle with my ego, and have danced with him too. I have written, I have spoken, and I have sung. I have worked in diverse fields, harvesting diverse crops. I have made money, I have lost money, I have had debt, I have paid debt, and I have forgiven debt. I have kept records, and I have lived like ripples in water.

I am perhaps halfway through my mortal life. Perhaps more, perhaps less.

What shall I do with the rest?

I know that the past presses mightily upon the future. I know also that it does not fully determine the future. I know that there are many things my life calls me to do in its second half that I have not done in its first half. I know that there are many other things it calls me to continue.

And I know that there are some things I am called to sacrifice. To leave behind on the pyre. To burn with the unwritten records of time forgotten. Dead idols to which I have turned for comfort and escape.

Escape from what? From those very calls. Life calls quietly, and the voice disturbs me much, because I fear the costs of my answer. And so I have sought out, built up, and clung to idols which seem to offer refuge from life in the embrace of death.

Pleasure, as an escape from life, can only be death.

To give up a pleasure, to give up the pursuit of pleasure as an escape, feels sacrificial. It feels painful, is painful. But it is a sacrifice of death for life. It is a relinquishing of dead idols at the door to enter communion with the living God.

No amount of writing will make this easy. So why do it?

I write to escape the siren call of dead idols. I write for strength to resist the killing comforts.

I write to live.