Why Do People Write?

 

Today, I’d like to discuss a topic that is very near and dear to my heart. It’s something that I love to do, and that is writing. So, I want to answer the question, “Why do people write?” Of course, I want to outline some reasons for why people write, but also to try to convince people who haven’t discovered writing and who fit the bill of writing and who should be writing to take it up. I hope to convince those people to write because some of the people that do are the people who are experiencing some sort of extreme emotion. Some people who write tend to be the people who are emotionally distraught, either experiencing some sort of really extreme positive motion or really extreme negative emotion.

For example, if you’re 100% serene and happy with your life, then you would be, on the one hand, too busy living and enjoying that happy life to be writing, because that would be a waste of time. At the same time, if you are happy with your life or if your life is just calm and monotonous, you would have no occasion and no inspiration to write anything. My idea is that the people who are emotionally distraught these days are the people who tend to write. I will get into that later in this post, so onto the proper reasons why people write.

Reasons to Write

The first reason why people write is that they write to remember and the second reason why they write is they write to forget. You may say, “This is a blatant contradiction,” but it’s not really. You may have both an extreme positive emotion and a negative emotion. We write to remember the good, and we write to forget the bad. We want to remember things that we think are worth remembering in these extreme emotions. For example, say you fall in love or you succeed or you just enjoy the weather that day. You want to be able to record that. The reason why you want to record that is life is fleeting. These emotions that you have are fleeting, and if you write them down, then later, when you forget that emotion, sensation, or idea, you’ll be able to revisit it. You can live it again and again and you can keep that emotion, idea, or sentiment forever.

That is very important, and yet so very simple. We write to remember the good and, at the same time, we write to forget the bad. For example, think of all of the negative emotion that we might encounter in our lives, such as a breakup or losing someone we dearly love. We write so that we can feel the sadness leaving us and to know that the sadness is temporary. With writing, we can get rid of it in a productive and non-destructive way. Then, we write as if we’re digging a hole into the ground in which we can bury our emotional baggage, whether we show it to people or we publish it anonymously. We can write a blog or we can just burn whatever we write. That act, in itself, destroys that negative emotion. It’s therapeutic and ultimately very productive.

Emotional Benefits of Writing

Just because a large percentage of emotionally distraught people write, it doesn’t follow that all emotionally distraught people write. Therefore, there are emotionally distraught people out there who haven’t discovered the joy of writing words. The act of writing can definitely help them to deal with the things going on in their lives. If you fall into the category of experience experiencing some sort of extreme emotion and you don’t write, you are at risk of great tragedy. Writing is the act of remembering the good and forgetting the bad, so the person who experiences the good and the bad but does not write is at risk of only remembering the bad and always forgetting the good, and that would be a tragic life to live.

Also, if you don’t write, your emotions are either bottled up within you—which is not healthy—or you vent to someone about your emotions, which can be quite a burden on someone because that person will have to counsel you. That person would have to experience the same extreme emotions that you are experiencing. The act of writing is such a good way to get rid of the baggage or to memorialize the things that you think are worth preserving because it hurts no one. It doesn’t even hurt yourself. The primary reason why you write is to try to heal yourself and to try to bring yourself back to the center instead of experiencing the extreme emotion alone.

In conclusion, definitely take up the pen and start writing. I know that this is sort of a different style of post. Normally, my posts are very analytical and talk about serious ideas in a very dry form, but I also want to want to discuss ideas that are more emotive and topics that deal with the human emotion rather than human rationality. I hope that you’ve enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed writing it.

For another interesting article, check out our post on why people whistle.