I have an answer to the following two questions at the forefront of my mind:

Why read?

To understand the perspectives of others; to recognize shared humanity alongside differences in time, place, situation, or other factors.

Why write?

To bring more complex ideas to the forefront of your mind and make meaningful connections between those ideas.

Every person will have their own way of thinking about and answering these questions. When I consider the first question, I am thinking of literature. Why read literature? I’m thinking about the question as though defending the importance of literature or persuading others that they should read literature.

When I consider the second question, I’m thinking of the kinds of writing I do: writing about literature and writing about one’s own life. As with the first question, I’m defending the importance of writing. I’m thinking of both questions in an inward-focused way, with the assumption that either activity of reading or writing is one you carry out for your own internal growth and strengthening.

It’s never been more apparent to me that most people in the world don’t think about these activities this way at all and don’t share my beliefs or aspirations toward reading and writing. I realize I’m in the minority here. That’s okay. My perspective is still valid, and I believe in the importance of my responses to these questions.

Today, I read an essay that made me want to get back to reading and writing again a little more seriously (fewer romance novels, more world literature, is what I mean by “seriously”). In “The Importance of Stories in an Era of Division,” Elliot Ackerman writes,

Art works through a process of emotional transference: artists—whether writers, filmmakers, painters, et cetera—feel something as they are creating their art. How many times have you watched a film teary-eyed, or gone into a museum and seen a painting that overwhelmed you, or—as is the case with this collection—finished a story that left you moved? If you’ve had that experience, the artists have transferred their emotion, or at least a fraction of it, to you. This process of emotional transference is an assertion of our shared humanity, that we can understand one another across cultural boundaries. Such an assertion is, at its core, an act of profound optimism. It is the antidote to the borderless pessimism that now besets much of the world.

This passage in particular served as a reminder to me of how and why human works of art are so important. I feel that works of human art have never been so denigrated as now, writing never so devalued, the humanities never so defunded.

The whole reason I started this blog was to keep “the dream” alive, whatever “the dream” is. The blog is a candle, burning, a very tiny light. It’s not much, but I tell myself it’s better than nothing.

Even what I write on paper, even when I read but never write about what I read. I tell myself that it’s important. It shapes my mind, my attitude, my behavior. The online life inevitably makes everything very performative after a while, and I feel that burden when I read or write. It makes me step away from the blog for a long period of time, but that is okay with me.

It is not so much for me about keeping a pure practice or a perfect practice, but remaining thoughtful in my responses to the “whys” of reading or writing, and doing as I believe.