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Writing is a Way to Think Deeply and Find Others Who Do Also [View all]
Reading great works can challenge us or, by comparison, make us notice how little effort or attention span many people exert in their communications. How little precision. How little thought. Social media posts are 94% hit and run. Angry hot takes, many of which completely miss the point of whatever they are responding to.
But writing is another mode altogether. Clarity. Revelations. The first audience for anything you write is you.
Carol S Pearson's seminal work "The Hero Within" is filled with deep psychological revelations, the kind that come from years of writing professionally and working with others who do:
“No matter how much people want to feel loved, appreciated, and a part of things, they will be lonely until they make a commitment to themselves, a commitment that is so total that they will give up community and love, if necessary, to be fully who they are.”
She analyzes the archetypal character arc used in most great stories. The protagonist goes through there archetypes in this order: the orphan, the wanderer, the warrior, the martyr. These correspond to the checklist used by Disney executives when evaluating potential projects:
Who is the Protagonist? = orphan, searching for the context of who they are
What do they want? = wanderer, searching for their purpose in this life
What stands in their way? = warrior, fighting and struggling to fulfill their purpose
What will happen if they don't get it? = martyr
She ties the wandering orphan phase to real life, uses a Carl Jung dynamic:
“Abandonment actually is quite facilitative at this stage. When Wanderers do not let another in, whether it is parent, lover, therapist, analyst, or teacher, it is important for that helper to pull away so that Wanderers can experience fully the aloneness they have created for their own growth. Otherwise, they will be diverted from recognizing their loneliness by fighting off the assaults of others against their walls.”
Ultimately we find revelation in our writing process. It forces us to look more closely at our lives and our role in it as parents, partners, helpers and mentors:
“Paradoxically, it is in resolving what sometimes seems an intolerable opposition between parental or professional responsibilities and personal exploration that people often find out more fully who they are. They come to know themselves moment by moment by the decisions they make, trying to reconcile their care for others with their responsibility to themselves. Maturity comes with that curious mixture of taking responsibility for our prior choices while being as imaginative as possible in finding ways to continue our journeys.”
Thinking deeply is worth the effort. I really wish more people would do it.
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