Self-knowledge is Fertilizer

In which direction shall my thoughts take me now? I have no idea. I just begin writing and hope that something inspires me to write a worthwhile piece. Sometimes, I have already given the subject matter some thought but most times I am searching for something to write about. This is a stream of consciousness exposé and I wish to capture everything that comes to mind from the beginning of the decision to write until the decision to end the session is made. This boilerplate text serves a function. It acts as a catalyst for what follows. Eventually, I stumble upon something to write. I want to demonstrate the mechanism by which I arrived at the topic of discussion. To witness the switching happen in real time. But still nothing occurs. I’m growing impatient. I should never write when seeking something to write about. It’s the least effective means of generating subject matter. Thinking real hard about what to think about yields no results in almost all cases. Interesting that that is so. I wonder why.

Maybe because occupying resources, straining yourself, to uncover something worth saying is itself a block to the kind of state of mind necessary for creative expression. Maybe saying a bunch of nonsensical alphabet-soup style sentences does more for the creative impulse or spark than thinking real hard about what to think. I don’t know.

Pause - nothing coming to mind

I’m not going to sit here staring into the wall hoping for something inspiring to occur to me. I’ll keep on writing. I don’t care. Even if it’s sloppy, it’s better to have written something, to have begun, than to have nothing at all. Even if the subject matter is trivial or banal it’s better to write. What else am I going to do? I wonder if anyone would find what’s written on these pages interesting. Maybe not these pages but on some page in the dialectic space. That would be surprising. To find an interested member. But that’s not the goal. The goal is to establish some truths. To uncover insights. To gain understanding and wisdom. That is what writing is for, for me anyway. It’s an incredibly powerful tool for introspection. To broaden your awareness of self, it is probably unmatched. If you want to understand yourself, and there are good reasons for why you would, writing is a tool in the kit of the individual that they should not go without. Writing is to the soul as sunlight is to dark places. I am not a writer in the traditional sense. I don’t do this as a job or to earn an income or even as a hobby. I do it as necessity. I’m not sure I even do it as a means of expression. I think it’s a means, like I said, of self-reflection. Of learning how you think. Of learning what you think and why you think it. Of creating the opportunity to change your mind. Writing is release. It’s the transcription of thought so that room for progress can be made. Steve Jobs wrote something about how everyone should learn to program because it teaches you how to think. Similarly, everyone should write because it teaches you what you think. It’s easy to know a bunch of the most common biases and fallacies but to recognize when they’re occurring in you and to simultaneously be honest and open about it and willing to accept and change is a rare quality. Writing helps make this quality more common. The more we write, the more we establish about ourselves. The more we establish about ourselves the better able we are to grow. Self-knowledge is fertilizer for self-actualization.