Why does anyone write?

To quote André Gide, “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again”.

Often, I ponder about the countless books that are published every single day or the proliferation of articles and blogs enabled by social media. As much as I enjoy reading a lot of this content, it makes me wonder if I have anything new to add to this ever-increasing collection of literature.

So, why do I write?

I write because I enjoy the process of articulating my thoughts into words. It helps me to process my feelings and internalize subsequent learnings.

Taking seemingly disparate occurrences from my life and weaving them into my storyline helps me to connect the dots.

Writing helps me to voice my opinion on things that I deeply care about.

At the start, like all naïve fledglings, I believed readers would be impressed by complex sentence structures and arcane vocabulary. I’m doing it again, aren’t I? 😄

I was surprised to find out that the complexity of my writings did not matter as much as the content of my message and the simplicity of its delivery. A misspelling or a minor grammatical error did not detract from the overall message. (The major ones I corrected, thanks to timely reader intervention.)

More surprisingly, my writings resonated most strongly with people who knew me well. This also opened up avenues for further discussions and an evolving narrative that left both parties wiser. A lot of times, acquaintances became friends and existing friendships grew stronger, even when we agreed to disagree.

The Butterfly Effect posits, that the flapping of a single butterfly’s wings can help create a hurricane on an entirely different continent. According to scientists Fowler and Christakis, an individual’s actions ripple through their social network. Our actions can influence people who are within three degrees of our social network. Similarly, I hope that my writings bring something of value to the people closest to me and those closest to them. Moreover, I wish to inspire thoughtful discussions, especially, if the reader’s opinion differs from mine. Those are the readers I cherish the most 😉, it is only then we can truly acknowledge our blind spots and achieve a greater understanding.

I bet your next question to me will be,

What do you write?

To that, I will say, “Watch this space!”

Lastly, I implore you — the reader — to write as well, even if you have an audience of one.