life

A Writing Challenge: When Pain Isn't Painful Enough

“why do we do what we do?”

tldr; wanted to write more but there wasn't enough pain if I didn't, so I started a writing challenge with a friend and we forfeit $ to each other if we don't

There's plenty of thoughts I come back to often, thoughts I'd love to explore deeper and share to the vast expanse that is the internet. Putting stuff out there on the internet is intriguing because you never know who may find out, and most of the times, you probably never know who actually does find it. Its fun in that sense. Brimming with potential serendipity and connections, but for most of the time you spend there, a lonely place. Now I can't say there is a singular reason I do choose to put “stuff” out there, but I will say the potential of it helping out in my career is certainly top of mind. The introverts way to networking (not that I'm solely an introvert, a topic for another discussion). Through my own experience 1, one thing I know for sure is that writing works. For whatever reason behind why a person may want to start writing or feel the urge to write or tell themselves I want to write, it does the trick. It forces you to think. To mull over each word, each sentence, and each paragraph to convey what you mean. That's hard. And self-administered hard things bode well in the longterm. We all know that. So, why don't I write more?

Blah blah blah, executive function 2, blah blah. Nah, I think it's much simpler and honest than that: I don't feel pain if I don't write. There's not enough pain. There's no consequence. There's not enough consequence. Here, the word ‘enough’ is important. And its also not enough to explain the complexity of the concept I'll try to tackle in this post; the opposite of pain, pleasure (conventionally speaking that is, something that we'll also wrangle), is also important in the equation of answering the question:

Why do we do the things that we do?

So now we have arrived at the key Q2A for this post (Q2A = Question(s) to Answer). I like framing problems in terms of questions, because asking the right question - which is very hard to do - is paradoxically really clarifying 3).

Do we do things that we do because we want to do them? Do we want to do things to avoid what happens if we don't? Do we even do things we only just want to do - or must we have to do them?

I’m not sure. But in a dramatic turn on lines of thought, I’m going to say this:

You’re thoughts are worth sharing.

Why do we not finish a single piece of writing that we feel comfortable putting out there? Why are we now just being forced to put up this unfinished piece of writing (so we don’t lose the bet) because we didn’t get to finishing it in due time. And yes, here ‘we’ = ‘me’.

Hmmm.

Well this post can’t come down, so I best revise it. 4

So, here I am, coming back two weeks later to finish it.

And I can’t help but focus on the line I bolded two weeks ago: You’re thoughts are worth sharing. I had forgotten I wrote those words here, but on a run a couple days ago, they resurfaced to the front of brain in a moment of confidence: You’re thoughts are worth sharing. I told myself. I told myself that and I believed it in the moment and the moments after. Then soon after, it slid back into the back of my mind. And then it came back again, this time when texting a friend. He was so kind and reached out to tell me he was amped to read on of my blogs and he had the desire to write more too. He’s got a great mind. I would love to read his writing. Because I would love to read his thoughts. His thoughts are worth sharing, too. At the time of the exchange, I told him I write because it’s something I’ve always wanted to do so it’d be cool to look back in 20 years and know what I was thinking when I was 25. Thats true. But there’s more truth to it, too. Your thoughts are worth sharing. Even if you write down your thoughts on paper in a notebook tucked away in your dresser, those thoughts are still shared. Those thoughts are no longer just in your head! You’ve thought them through and you’ve turned them into scribbles on a page, now capable of igniting the electrical firing of neurons in someone else’s mind.

That’s a beautiful thing. 5

It’s a beautiful thing to communicate. Evolutionary, there was tremendous incentive to communicate. Tribes go stronger with more people sharing more knowledge and more resources. But people don’t have to write to survive. Surely, I don’t need to (at the expense of losing a few dollars in a bet). Much of what our ancestors did can be explained by their will to survive. That’s still true today, as I will impulsively move my hand off a burning hot stove in the same way our ancestors would move their hands off of fire-hot stones. But we live in a much different world today, where most of what we do isn't to survive. We have most of our basic needs taken care of. We don't have to go hunt to eat dinner or find shelter to weather a storm. 6 So, what do we do all day - and why do we do them?

I’m not sure.

I know I do things at the last minute, because I’m motivated by a deadline. I know I submitted this blog post because I didn’t want to lose a bet. I know I search for a more fulfilling job because the current one isn’t enough. I know I don’t quit my current job because it’s not painful enough. I know life is becoming more comfortable for most on the planet, prosperity is increasing, and with comfort comes complacency. I know binge-watching TV shows is a short, artificial escape from reality. I know that people will continue to do some things and also not do other things. Although I don’t know why we do the things that we do, I do know that it’s complicated.

Certainly not answerable in one post.

Footnotes

  1. Some of my fondest schooling memories are those that have to do with writing, and expressing oneself personally through literature in some form. In Mr. Bronke's 9th grade class, we did weekly "speed dumps" of nonstop continuous writing for 10 minutes at the beginning of every class and where we were also assigned actually personal writing assignments for a grade. It was therapy as much as it was teaching us to learn to express our thoughts. Mrs. Doose's 7th grade class was an exploration into language, writing, and presentation as an art form and journey of self-exploration. At a time where many of us in the onset of our teenage years were starting to ask very personal questions about who we were as individuals, it was a burst of cold wind on a frigid early morning. I’ve also always a natural desire to start writing; whether it be through the countless, half used notebooks (digital and physical) to write about "my thoughts" and daydream about writing a book one day or more-so recently by listening to all the podcasts where people in positions I desire speak to the power of writing as a sneakily inevitable way to advance their careers and self-understanding. ↩

  2. Upcoming post = ADHD: Medication, uniqueness, and the deferred life plan ↩

  3. Upcoming post = How dare you: Being confident in a world of unknowns ↩

  4. If this part was confusing. It’s because I was too — context: I didn’t end up finishing this piece properly before the 3 week deadline for the bet with my friend. So I had to post it. I’m now editing it so its ‘finished’. ↩

  5. Image a life where people didn’t communicate with others. You can’t. Life depends on it; my thoughts and your thoughts. Something I try to keep in mind: it’s way too easy nowadays to fill up your brain space with others’ thoughts and opinions, leaving nothing left for your own. A reminder to get offline (looking at you Twitter/X), and think for yourself. ↩

  6. Unfortunately, there’s still 150 million people not included in this ‘we’. ↩