It may seem odd, writing a post with such subject line, when I haven't written one in two months. My life, though, is scattered with moments that revolve around this question of "why writing", and I think I just had one. So, the only logical thing to do....
I was sitting here, in my office hours, recieving a slow trickle of Intro to Sociology assignments (I will be grading about 80 of them this weekend--that fact could be furthered discussed in a post entitle "why I DON'T write"), reading some of my friends' blogs. A couple of them have had babies recently, a few of them I haven't talked to in awhile, and reading their blogs makes me feel closer to them than I would be able to be otherwise. Then, I thought I might mosey on over to my own personal cyber-forum, seeing as I hadn't been in awhile... and then, I started reading some of my past posts. And I started to realize something: I write for ME.
I honestly believe that if I didn't write, I would have a much thinner conception of myself, my past, and where I am going. When I read what I've written a year ago, I think: oh YEAH, wow! That's where I was, and I have THAT in me!! We all know that modern life is like a rushing river, carrying us along and leaving us just enough time to frantically paddle. My paddling has been more frantic than ever this semester, and it's due to a combination of institutionalized norms that I'm living up to and my own D-R-I-V-E. I'm quite good at envisioning projects and accomplishments, and I am capable of seeing them through--I just still don't have the best sense of how much is reasonable to expect of myself in terms of time and energy (and emotional health). Yet thank God, I still from time to time have these moments, where the words I've written along the way mark where I've been, and I realize that the moving rush of my personal narrative is bigger than a career, than a family life, than moving around the country, or simply a chronicle of events and accomplishments. The Intro to Sociology assignments I will be grading this weekend are papers about narratives--how our lives fit into overarching collective narratives, how we understand our lives in terms of those narratives, and how narratives are more than just historical chronicles. They tell the moments plus the meanings of those moments. They enable us to understand ourselves and our world.
My narrative, then, is not about this job, that job, this person, that person; it's about learning love, feeling deep, clumsily trying to mimic the beauty I see around me, cleaning up dark corners, and responding to the spiritual reality of life. There is a beginning, middle, end, hero, villain, climax, plot, theme; and what's more, it's not just about me or even primarily about me....
It's about everyone.