Write It Down
“Sometimes just the act
of writing down the problems
straightens out your head
as to what they really are.”
I’m currently reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and am realizing that I think my favorite literary genre is what you might call narrative philosophy, in which a deep philosophical message/thesis is communicated in the midst of a story. This way, the conceptual philosophical essence can come to life in some manifest form, in the narrative story, rather than remaining simply conceptual, like taking an intellectual understanding of expressionistic art at large and seeing it come to life in one particular painting.
The quote above comes from the aforementioned book, written by Robert Pirsig and published in 1974. The simple act of writing down a thought clarifies what the thought actually is, and maybe inevitably changes it. A thought is something existing nebulously in my mind, whatever that (the mind) is, and to take that thought and articulate it clearly in words is to transform something that consisted of vague, ephemeral substance into manifest, solid form, not unlike the difference between “expressionistic art” as an idea and a painting that could be described as expressionistic in style.
So this is to say that writing, or drawing, or speaking, etc., has the power to change whatever it is that is written, drawn, or spoken. And if that thing currently exists as a “problem,” to clearly articulate what about it exactly is problematic may be all that is needed to change it from a problem into something else, into just what it is. And this, I believe, is one of the main beneficial impacts of things like journaling and therapy, the clear articulation and understanding of something that was previously unclear.
How would you describe,
as simply and clearly
as possible,
a current problem
you’re facing?
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