3 ways in which writing helps us!

There is something magical about writing. I say this out of my own experiences. In this blog-post, I have tried to put forth my views about why writing helps us beautifully. 

Firstly, writing helps us to organise our thoughts

I honestly believe that many conflicts and problems in life are simpler than what we perceive them to be. However, because of the awesome speed at which our mind thinks, we complicate things. Writing is a good handy solution to this.

I will give an example. I was recently working on some assignment that had to be completed within a period of three months. It was the kind of work I had never done in my life previously. So obviously I had to put a lot of thinking about what is the right way and what might be the implications of my actions. 

I had no clue how to go about solving it. I tried to write the problem properly. I opened my laptop and began to type everything - What is the problem? How do I think we might reach to a solution? What are the challenges that I might face? How should I tackle them? Believe me, I wrote everything and then it became crystal clear.

And I wrote like – there are five challenges I will face – a, b, c, d and e. Then I put my mind to ‘a’. How to solve ‘a’? How to solve ‘b’? I wrote everything down. I am not joking when I say this. I was in a car travelling on a one hour journey. Throughout this one hour, I was crazily typing everything on my laptop. And by the time I reached, I had a very clear picture of everything. It was as if I had calculated all the implications in my mind and thought upon their possible solutions.

Had I spent that one hour on thinking about the same situation, but without writing it out, I am sure I could not have solved it as efficiently as I did then.

I am the kind of person that if some thing affects me, it sticks on top of my mind. As a result of this I am not able to think about the other aspects of the situation. Writing helps here, because I would be forced to read what I wrote. And as I read, I would have to think about it. And then solutions emerge clearly.

  

Secondly, writing makes us real and genuine

It helps us to be ourselves. The written word has a lot of authenticity as compared to what is spoken. To think of it in another way, we are more likely to be truthful in what we write as against what we speak. Written words stay forever. And therefore writing helps us to know the value of words.

Try this – Try to speak a few lines about yourself. Just whatever comes to your mind, speak it.

And then, try to write a few lines about yourself.

I can’t say if this happens with you, but it does happen with me – whenever I write about something, I tend to be more careful about my words. For example, while speaking I may say that I am a hard-working person. But when I write that word, I will probably scrutinise it more closely. Am I really hard-working? Or is it that I am just writing things baselessly!

And you know what I feel – when we write about something, we genuinely think about it. And then the thought stays with us. Therefore, over time, we will have developed ourselves as a person who is more reliable and clear with his views. I may be overstretching it for beginners, but I think this is one real good advantage of writing.

Lastly, by writing, we share with the world a part of ourselves!

As I write this, I am reminded of that beautiful song from an old Hindi movie –

Ek din bik jayega… maati ke mol

Jag me reh jayenge… pyaare tere bol!

In English it literally means – one day (when you die) your worth will be just like sand. The only thing that will remain of you in this world, o dear, will be your words!

Did you ever try writing a diary for yourself? For most people including me, writing diaries is usually tough. I had tried writing diary entries at one time but I never managed to continue doing it. But whenever I feel low, or whenever I feel happy, or whenever something significant happens in life such that it affects me – I make it a point to write it. I shall give you some examples.

When I was preparing for CA-Final exams, I used to write how I am feeling. I used to write if I was afraid, if I was confident. At times I even used to write when I felt like crying that I am not able to do anything. I also wrote when I was living alone out of my country for some time in a totally different atmosphere. That was an experience worth retaining. Back in my school time also, I used to write when I was feeling bad about something, or feeling very happy about something.

And interestingly, I still have those written pieces with me. Believe me reading these things is one of the best experiences ever. It is a very big feel good factor for me. Sometimes when I read that, I feel like laughing at how I was back then. I will share one interesting incident with you –

Once when I was in school I faced problems in one of my subjects. And my teacher was not very supportive that time. You know I got back home and wrote about all the bad feelings I had. I even wrote how bad my teacher is. I expressed all my anger and depression in black and white.

Now recently I was going through all those things I wrote. And I found it so funny. That time I was very sad because my teacher had told me that she wanted me to complete reading one chapter and then write a summary. And I felt that it was a very big task and I could never achieve it.

Obviously now that I have grown up it looks very odd that I got upset with such a little problem. It was almost laughable today. But then I realised one thing –

Whatever we are going through right now – will also be a very small problem one day. And everything changes. Life does not stop. And I got this lesson now because I had written my feelings at that point of time.

Trust me – write more often, in whatever language and whatever vocabulary you feel comfortable with. We may not want to write for the world to read, but we can always write for ourselves. J

May everyone live a happy and peaceful life! May everyone keep on smiling!

Cheers!

Palkesh