Why Do It At All?

Sometimes I wonder:

Why do it at all?

Why write?

Why try?

There are many other writers.

Better writers.

Smarter than me, anyway.

They make arguments I can't understand.

Better ones, too.

Ones that make me nod my head and say, "Of course."

Which is, of course, what you want.

You want it to feel

obvious,

but only in hindsight.

Arguments so good, they feel effortless.

Mine aren't like that, though.

Mine feel like digging something out of the ground with my bare hands.

It hurts.

So, why bother?

The best writers write the way jazz musicians play jazz.

It flows out of them.

They are in the moment.

But I think too much to be

in the moment.

Not in the "I'm smart" kind of way, but in the

If-I-think-hard-enough-I-can-make-things-turn-out-all-right

kind of way.

Anyway,

text is cheap, now.

ChatGPT writes like Haruki Murakami, now.

it writes whole books and puts them on Amazon.

It writes all the college essays

And the teachers use ChatGPT to grade them

And soon enough the whole world will just be ChatGPT talking to itself.

So,

why write?

Why do it at all?

Then, sometimes,

I have a moment.

Last night I had a moment.

I was putting my son down for bed.

He was reading, wrapped up in a blanket.

He didn't look up when I came in.

I sat on his bed and gave him a hug.

I kissed his head and smelled his hair, which doesn't smell like hair, but smells like him.

I could feel his body, his bones. I could feel how small he is.

I said I love you, bud. I am proud of you.

And he said I love you, too.

And then I left the room

and went to close the door.

and I froze.

Everything stopped for a moment:

the light coming out of the room

the shadows to my left

the sounds of my wife in the other room

the quiet hum of the house

and I knew, for a fact

I will not always be here.

I won't always have this.

I will want to be here, right at this very moment, with everyone exactly as they are -

I will want it more than I've ever wanted anything

and I won't be able to get it.

I knew it for a fact. I felt it in my whole body.

And I wanted so badly to

trap it and catch it and freeze it and capture it

the moment

forever, to make it stop right where it was.

So I took a picture.

Took a picture of my hand,

of the light,

of the shadows,

of the sounds,

of the quiet hum,

because they say a picture is worth a thousand words.

But it isn't.

That's a lie.

A picture can't breathe.

Words can.

Words change when you do.

They mean different things at different times,

they grow,

evolve.

Words do what we do.

And that's why, for the most-human things,

only words will do.

And that's why I write.

That's why I do it at all.

It's just that

it was only obvious

in hindsight.

Yours,

Dan

SOMETHING I'M READING:

An oldie, but a goodie, and something I needed at present.

You Are Not Late

[Translations: Italian, Japanese, Chinese] Can you imagine how awesome it would have been to be an entrepreneur in 1985 when almost any dot com name you wanted was available? All words; short ones, cool ones. All you had to do was … Continue reading →

The TechniumKevin Kelly