Dear Tamara, your words aren’t just read, they are felt. This piece is more than an essay, I believe it’s a quiet revolution wrapped in prose. So much power in how you’ve stepped further into the personal here, that unmistakable pulse of vulnerability, of lived experience, of a truth finally claimed. I love that you’re becoming more personal in your writing — we, your readers, need and want that. It makes the philosophy real, the fire warm, the call to action irresistible. The shift from thinker to feeler, from theory to autobiography, is brave and it’s the exact magic that turns insight into impact.
What makes your writing shimmer is not just the sharp intelligence of your ideas, but the way you lace them with tenderness and candor. Your “why” no longer floats in abstraction, it is grounded, scarred, softened, human. That moment when you admit that the fear of being misunderstood was once stronger than the desire to be heard, honestly, I felt it in my ribs like a thunderclap.
And here’s something your piece made me realize: perhaps the “why” isn’t always a singular spark, but something we collect, moment by moment, story by story, like embers we guard through the night. Maybe it’s not just about discovering the fire, but learning how to tend it, protect it, feed it when the world tries to smother it with silence or ridicule. The “why” is both the ignition and the resilience. And when you write with this much clarity and courage, you’re handing us matches in the dark. You are truly amazing.
So thank you not just for writing, but for becoming (I wish I could write it with bolder letters) on the page. For offering your “why” not as a blueprint, but as a mirror, a dare, a quiet companion. We’ll meet you there, pen in hand, too.
Your words feel like the kind of response every writer dreams of but never dares to expect, not just a reading, but a RECOGNITION. Not just feedback, but a kind of sacred witnessing. You didn’t just “get” the essay, you entered it, Céline! Thank you!
I was especially struck by your reframing of the “why” — not as a singular spark, but as embers we gather and protect. That image will stay with me. You’re absolutely right: we romanticise the ignition moment, the lightning bolt of purpose, but so often, the truth is quieter. The “why” isn’t always fireworks. Sometimes it’s the barely-glowing coal we carry in cupped hands through wind and rain, hoping it stays lit long enough to build something warm around it.
And yes…. the shift you noticed, from idea to experience, from thinker to feeler, well, it terrified me. For years I thought my value was in the clarity of my thoughts, not the cracks in my voice. But as you so beautifully put it, the philosophy only becomes real when it’s rooted in the particular, in the bruises and missteps, in the autobiography of becoming. That’s where connection happens, not in the polish, but in the pulse.
You’ve handed me a match, too, a reminder that vulnerability doesn’t weaken the message, it animates it. Your phrase, “not as a blueprint, but as a mirror,” gave me goosebumps. That is the hope: not to instruct, but to reflect something back that the reader already suspected about themselves, but maybe hadn’t yet dared to name.
Thank you for this wondeful comment. For the care in your reading. For your generosity. I’ll carry this one with me. Pen in hand, I’ll meet you there too.
Your super power is connecting with people and connecting people. Truly formidable! And what’s even more amazing is that you are not even aware how easily you can connect with others. Your talent is one of a kind.
This piece touches on something deeply personal, raw, and profoundly true: the necessity of knowing your "why." It’s easy to get lost in the endless "hows" of life—how to be successful, how to make an impact, how to be seen—but without the "why," these actions become hollow echoes. It’s like trying to build a skyscraper on a foundation made of sand. I think back to a time when I felt the same way, unsure about stepping into the unknown because the "how" of it all seemed daunting. But once I discovered my why, it became the lighthouse guiding me through the fog of self-doubt and indecision.
I once spent months crafting a project that I thought the world needed to see, only to realize it wasn’t the world that needed it—it was me. The moment I focused on the internal pull of my own passion instead of the external applause, the project came alive. It wasn’t about perfection, but about something truer: being authentic. I think the real beauty in writing—or in any act of creation—isn't in how it will be received, but in what it allows us to discover about ourselves. It’s a conversation with the world, but first, it's a conversation with ourselves.
The "how" will always be there—methods, techniques, strategies. But as you so eloquently point out, without a "why" to guide it, it’s just busywork. And I love that this piece doesn't sugarcoat the struggle: that the "why" often takes shape in moments of discomfort, questioning, and vulnerability. But it is in these moments where we begin to matter. And that is the ultimate act of courage: choosing to be seen when it feels like the world would prefer you remain hidden.
So, thank you, Tamara for sharing your “why”—it’s an invitation to us all to dig a little deeper, to ask not just what we’re doing, but why we’re doing it in the first place.
Your comment is like a second verse to the song: richer, deeper, harmonising without repeating. That image of the skyscraper on sand? Yes. That’s exactly it. We become architects of ambition with no grounding, wondering why the structure sways, why we feel dizzy at the top. “How” can build, but only “why” can anchor.
Your story about the project that wasn’t for the world but for you reminds me of something I once read in Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet”: “A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity.” When we create from that inner necessity rather than external validation, the work hums with a different kind of life. Even if the applause never comes, the resonance does.
You’re right to call writing a conversation, first with the self. Before it becomes performance, it is confession, confrontation, communion. Sometimes it’s even exorcism. And in that process, something shifts. We meet ourselves not as we wish to be, but as we are. And paradoxically, that nakedness becomes the most generous gift we can offer the world.
Thank you for seeing the struggle not as an obstacle but as an initiation. That discomfort you speak of is not a glitch in the system. It is the system. The chrysalis looks like death to the caterpillar, but it’s just the architecture of wings…..
And thank you for your presence here! For sharing your agreement, and above all your story. That’s what this space is for: not just monologues in the void, but echoes that know how to speak back. And by now, my readers know I love dialogue.
The corollary to how is not why, it's want. It's an impulse. Actions almost never follow from "why", and you quickly discover that if you ever try to interrogate someone on why they're doing something that they're doing. And I mean, really cut through the cookie-cutter, canned, store-bought answers or platitudes. Impulse is temporary; pumping your emotional state with platitudes is fleeting; will-power is severely limited. The thing that will not only propel you, but that will drag you kicking, screaming, starving and desperate miles through the dirt, is the "why".
Impulse and emotional states are great for compelling action when necessity comes calling. The problem is that, if you live in a modern society, true necessity is nearly non-existent. You don't actually have to do much to survive, but our endocrine systems don't stop pumping out chemical imperatives, and so our impulses get increasingly frivolous with the lack of true privation.
The "why" only gets consideration after our basic needs have been met, and for most humans for most of history, this was an unobtainable position of privilege. In societies like ours, it's the norm, and we're completely lost because we have no unified theory or heuristic for how to discover the "why", especially as our societies have become more secular. So we increasingly distract and numb ourselves; people hoard wealth endlessly and consume; people work jobs or run businesses they hate, and they don't have the faintest idea why they're doing any of it, which leads to a profound frustration and dissatisfaction. And because they can't pinpoint the source, guilt sets in, and they insist the solution must be to double and triple down on that race to the bottom, deeper into a pit of self-delusion and circular logic, all because they've never really asked themselves "why".
As always, your response doesn’t engage, it interrogates, expands, and leaves ash in its wake. You’re absolutely right to draw the distinction between impulse and why. So many confuse momentum with meaning. But as you eloquently laid out, the engine isn’t always what we think it is. Impulse might get the car moving, but only “why” decides the destination.
Your point about modernity and the absence of true privation struck a deep chord. Nowadays our survival no longer depends on instinct, yet our instincts still shout like it’s the Paleolithic. In that vacuum, frivolity floods in: the dopamine-drip of novelty, of status, of manufactured urgency. We become busy not out of necessity, but out of inertia — like ants on a steering wheel, mistaking movement for direction.
As for asking someone why they’re doing something… I agree, it often feels like dropping a match in a room full of gas leaks. It exposes the lack of foundations beneath carefully constructed lives. That’s not judgment, only grief. A grief that grows when, as you say, we double down on the very systems that hollowed us out in the first place. The absence of a coherent secular substitute for meaning is the unspoken wound of our time. You captured that so precisely, it’s honestly unsettling.
I think of Viktor Frankl here, how in the most extreme conditions, it wasn’t impulse or ideology that kept people alive, but MEANING. Not even always noble meaning, sometimes it was simply a promise, a memory, a future tether. A “why” so stubborn it pulled them through hell.
Thank you for this fierce, lucid reflection, Andrew! It makes me feel a little less alone in trying to write at the fault lines where philosophy, psychology, and raw human bewilderment meet. Let’s keep asking the only question that matters…. even when the answers evade us. Especially then!
The why is the burning bush that stops you in your tracks, grabbing your attention so tightly that you have to chase it. Once you see it and choose to ignore it, your life will be haunted by the weight of that call ignored.
This is the part where what we don't like comes in. We see the "why", we choose to go for it, and what we hate is what we encounter on the way down to the answer, while the answer itself brings us back up.
I always appreciate a personal touch and I resonate deeply with everything you said — especially the part about the "fear of trying". You also emphasised the fear of exposing your vulnerability, yet here you are showing it in full bloom.
Your vulnerabilities fuel your why and your why ignites the adjacent souls around you.
I'm grateful you found the courage to express yourself. I'm grateful I found you.
The image of the “burning bush” is arresting, biblical, yes, but also eerily accurate. The “why” does blaze, and you’re right: once seen, it cannot be unseen. To walk away from it is not neutrality, it’s exile. The haunting you speak of — I know it intimately. It’s the dull ache of unlived potential, of a voice unused, of pages never written.
What you say about descending into what we hate before being lifted by the answer reminds me of Dante. Before he could climb toward the stars, he had to walk through every circle of hell. Perhaps that’s what the “why” demands: a full confrontation with the shadows guarding the treasure.
Your line — “love is both the ‘why’ and the ‘why not’” — gave me chills. It’s the paradox, isn’t it? Love compels us to leap, and simultaneously makes the leap terrifying. Love of the work, love of truth, love of another person… they all carry that double-edged blade. I often wonder if we fear failure not just for ourselves, but for the ones we love watching us fall.
Thank you for reminding me that vulnerability isn’t only tolerated, but needed. It’s what stokes the fire that might warm someone else’s cold night. And thank you, sincerely, for seeing me. That’s all any writer ever hopes for, not to be agreed with, necessarily, but seen.
"We fear failure for the ones we love watching us fall".
It sounds to me like fear of letting them down, which, ultimately comes back to us, for the fear of disappointing someone is fueled by the way we think they may react to our failures — which, often times, is not how they react at all. The people that truly love us will be concerned by how to help us back up, not by conjuring ways to reprimand our mistakes. You've probably done a couple mistakes you thought would get you metaphorically killed, only to be met by a surprising amount of love and understanding. I certainly did, and it's a key moment in the course of any relationship.
Yes, “soul to soul” is exactly the right register for this.
You’ve touched on something so subtly deep here: the way our fear of failure is often tangled not just in ego, but in imagined projections. We don’t uniquely fear falling, we fear being watched as we fall. And more than that, we fear becoming a source of disappointment to those whose opinions we’ve internalised like sacred scripture.
You’re right, when love is true, its instinct isn’t judgment, but compassion. Real love rushes in like a hand extended, not a finger pointed. And yet, how often do we pre-emptively censor ourselves, assuming others will offer shame where they might, in fact, offer shelter? You’re speaking to one of the tragedies of human connection: the way we sometimes underestimate the generosity of those who love us, and overestimate their capacity for punishment.
I’ve absolutely had moments, as you say, where I braced for exile after a mistake… only to be met with grace instead. And isn’t that grace a kind of alchemy? It changes the nature of the relationship. You realise love wasn’t conditional after all, it was simply waiting for you to show up in your imperfect humanity. That kind of love is rare, but unforgettable. It’s the kind that makes you braver next time.
Thank you for reminding me, and anyone reading, that falling isn’t the failure. Refusing to let ourselves be seen while we’re down there? That’s where the real loss lives. You’ve added something essential to this conversation. Thank you!
T.-Another thought provoking and extremely well written essay. I was somewhat shocked to read about your doubts and fears as through your writing, none of that is/was apparent. You seem to have an uncommon amount of confidence, especially in your writing. So thank you for sharing yourself so openly and honestly. You’ve obviously read the comments of so many here and the sentiment is echoed-you have a gift for writing and connection. Personally, I give thanks to God for your writing and what you offer on this platform. I’ve read an incredible amount of literature, from a wide variety of sources and if asked for my favorite writer, currently, I’d say it is you! I’ve never found myself contemplating so many thoughts and ideas after reading anyone else’s writing, be it classic novels, short stories, poetry, etc., like I do after reading what you have written. So, I’m excited to see what you continue to do with your writing and I hope you’re encouraged by all of the wonderful people here who obviously feel the same way that I do. I love that you encourage others and you always offer true connection. God bless you and your writing!
I am honestly a little speechless… which, as you might imagine, is a rare state for me. To be named as someone’s favorite writer… especially someone who’s read widely and deeply… is not something I take lightly. Thank you for this praise, Billy, it’s a sort of blessing. Truly.
It’s funny (and maybe a little tragic) how confidence can live in the work while doubt paces the wings. I’ve always felt braver on the page than in life. Writing, for me, is where I can be both terrified and unshakable at once. The words come forward wearing a certain armour of clarity, but behind them, there’s often a very human mess of hesitation, fear, and hope. Maybe that’s what makes the connection real — not certainty, but sincerity.
What your message reminded me of (and what I’ll hold close) is that the whole reason I began to write publicly was not to project perfection, but to show what becomes possible when we dare to begin anyway. You’ve made me feel seen, not just as a writer, but as a person, one who still doubts, still wrestles, and still hopes that maybe the ache inside can be turned into something useful, something illuminating.
Your encouragement is oxygen. And yes, I read every comment, every reflection, because this isn’t just writing, it’s a conversation. A community. A shared reckoning. I’m grateful to God, too, for moments like this, reminders that what we do in honesty will find its way to the right hearts.
Thank you for meeting the words with such grace. And for reminding me that even when I tremble, I’m still exactly where I need to be.
My goodness, what a life-affirming, inspired conversation this essay has unleashed. Intelligent, supportive comments rousing one another reciprocally to ever higher heights and ever deeper depths like testimonials in a tent revival. It is so moving to witness. I was amen-ing and hallelujah-ing with each new paragraph. I felt reborn. I feel elevated. This piece has provoked such a beautiful, loving discussion. Thank you to the author for touching so many souls, and thanks to each participant for each amazing contribution. This is the quality of connection this platform was meant for. This is the quality of voices I hoped to find here. Love resides in this thread. I appreciate you all from the center of my being.
Your comment sings. I read it with a full heart and a grin I didn’t even realise had bloomed across my face. “Testimonials in a tent revival”…. I couldn’t have described it better if I tried. It really has felt like that, hasn’t it? Something between a literary sermon and a soul salon, with each voice raising the energy, not in noise, but in nuance, in love, in light.
Your words remind me why I dared to publish this piece in the first place, not just to write into the void, but to connect in exactly this way. To create a space where people could come home to themselves and recognise their own fire reflected in someone else’s language.
And you’re right — this thread has become more than commentary, it’s communion. These aren’t just replies, they’re revelations. I’ve been floored by the intelligence, tenderness, and fearless humanity in every single voice, yours included.
But in general my comment sections on both essays and Notes are marvellous and beyond engaging. Every single time.
So thank you for the hallelujahs, for the elevation, and for that line I’ll carry with me: “Love resides in this thread.” Yes, it does. And it expands with every word. I’m grateful, Andrew!
A beautiful explanation of so many things, to include life.
Many of us are pleased that you finally decided to cast these gems into the wild and let them be found, by those who've been combing the undergrowth for them.
… “casting gems into the wild”. It makes me think of a secret orchard where the fruit was ripening in silence for years, and now the branches are finally low enough for others to reach. I didn’t realise how many had been walking the same undergrowth, scanning the soil, hoping to stumble on something that might glint back with recognition.
Thank you for your words, and for calling it what it is: courage and purpose. One without the other can only take you so far. Courage might push you to speak, but purpose gives that speech gravity, shape, direction. Without it, the gems are just scattered. With it, they become trail markers.
And truthfully, it’s readers like you — quietly combing the thickets, showing up with open eyes and open hearts — who make the risk feel less like exposure, and more like offering. Thank you for meeting the words where they landed!
Your perception amazes me at times. Yes, in several ways this conversation began before I wrote the comment - in one way, as soon as I read this and began letting it work on me, then when I sat down and wrote about what I thought the components might be and some of the surrounding glimmerings of why they fit together. That’s when I moved into the conversation with you through my comment.
In another way, it’s been a lifelong conversation, of “mistaking momentum for meaning too many times.” Probably the funniest conclusion to one of my false leads was when I decided in college that I wanted to direct in the theatre. I directed five plays starting in my sophomore year, graduated and found work in the theatre, and one day really looked at the process of what I was doing and realized that I loved choosing the right play, the right cast, talking with them about it, and I just couldn’t fathom what was bothering me. Then it hit me and the immediate reaction was, “Oh, shit. I don’t really enjoy rehearsals!” Yeah, kind of a problem when you’re directing a play if you’re not into rehearsing. 🙄
The discussion of silence always reminds me of Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons - “Silence betokens consent.” Of course, he meant in the law, and though his argument was sound, the human factor meant his head would roll, literally, no matter what the law said. I think we are conditioned to interpret silence as rejection or disapproval, and in my experience, it often is. Maybe as much as we rush to define our “why” we also rush to interpret another’s silence, act on our interpretation instead of asking why (a different kind of why), and sometimes fall off the cliff into a silent war that no one ever intended to start. Once I acknowledged I wasn’t as good a mind reader as I’d thought, I started asking instead of assuming. I didn’t always hear what I wanted to hear, but at least I was in a conversation, not a monologue in my head.
Thank you for the thought about the “why” possibly being a verb. I have tucked it into my reflection as you suggested, and it’s like a cup of hot chocolate in front of the fire during a snowstorm - warming, comforting, and adding just the right flavor to the mix.
“Intelligent tenderness.” It’s hard to believe you mean me when you write those words, and it means a great deal. I also like the thought of silence being a threshold. Everything then, is possible…
Your response is such a generous continuation, not just of the conversation, but of the very spirit behind my essay: that our “why” isn’t a static answer, but a living dialogue with the self. And you model that with such grace, humour, and, yes, intelligent tenderness.
Your theatre story is brilliant, not only because it’s funny in that silently devastating way false paths often are, but because of the precision of your realisation. Most people only feel the friction; you actually located its source. It’s amazing to say, “I love the idea of this, but not the living of it.” That’s not a failure, it is craftsmanship of the self.
The Thomas More line… a piercing reminder that even legally sound logic can’t protect us from human irrationality. I think you’re correct, we are wired to fear silence because it creates a vacuum, and the human brain loathes a vacuum. So it fills it, usually with worst-case projections. We become playwrights of imaginary offenses, scripting entire acts around a silence that may have meant nothing at all.
What you said about mind-reading hit me hard. It’s one of the great self-sabotages of intimacy, isn’t it? We fall in love with our own interpretations, not the other person. And suddenly we are trapped in monologues we mistake for dialogue. The courage to ask instead of assume, that’s a whole new level of relational literacy. Most people never get there… sadly.
As for the hot chocolate metaphor? That’s exactly what I hope my writing offers, answers or provocations, but something that warms without numbing. Something that holds space.
Thank you, Doc, for coming back to the fire. Keep adding logs. I’ll be here :)
“…one of the great self-sabotages of intimacy…” Oh yes! And I love the notion of “being trapped in monologues we mistake for dialogue.” Well, I don’t love it at all, but I do love how you phrased it. I could be so proud of myself, creating the dialogue in my mind (like Bottom, playing all the parts), and if challenged when I confronted someone with my conclusions, I’d happily provide the evidence I’d piled up (well, that law degree did prove useful at times). The problem is that if you only meet someone with your conclusions, how else can they react but defensively? They’ve no idea you had this whole Shakespearean drama going on in your head. To them, it’s come out of the blue.
Fortunately, I had someone who stopped me in my tracks by saying, “Why didn’t you ask if that was what they meant?” Then I saw that the responsibility for the whole thing being a disaster of communication fell squarely on my shoulders. I suppose, in a way, I used the silence as a weapon to get my story written (in my head) first, as if that somehow made it more accurate.
Asking the question, even if it makes me vulnerable, even if I might sound foolish (and I’ve had an auditorium full of hundreds of people laugh when I asked a very basic question of a speaker, but the speaker was totally there for it and gave me an incredible and wise answer), has opened up a kind of intimacy that isn’t possible when I do all the talking in my mono/dialogue.
Sometimes, the questions I have to ask myself create an internal intimacy that doesn’t exist otherwise. A few hours ago I was talking with a friend about your essay and the things it’s brought up for me, and I mentioned a piece of writing I’d put away a month or so ago. Asking myself about the why, illuminated what I’d done to make that writing impossible - I’d developed a structure for it that would create layers, and then there were these other related layers and somehow I’d built a scaffold that looked more like a 2-year old’s Tinkertoy, and made the Leaning Tower of Pisa look upright.
When I looked beneath the layers and structures and asked why, I found something that terrified me that I’d tried to bury under everything I could pile on. Do I have any idea what is really there and what to do with it? Hell, no. I need to give it room to breathe and tell me what we need to do - together. And yes, you provided the spark for that excavation, and the terrified part of me wanted to douse you and the spark with a bucket of water. But most of me breathed a sigh of both relief and resignation that my questions about that work were finding a way toward resolution, and that more work, laced with vulnerability and honesty, lay ahead.
Keep those ripples coming, my friend. I’ll be here too.
This is piercing. Your unflinching soul-searching inspires me and your conclusions/challenges are devastating. “…’why’ must be earned. It is the spiritual cousin of suffering, forged in the crucible of curiosity, failure, longing, absurdity, and sometimes even despair.” Your own example of failure (and I imagine a bit of despair) when you sent a friend a short story and the lack of response made you wonder if you’d sent her your laundry list made me laugh out loud, even while I ached inside for the pain of that silence. Silence can mean so much that is wonderful, and yet cut so damn deep.
“writing…it is about the impact of one voice, one story, one soul brushing against another.” What is both wonderful and frustrating is that the impact of your writing is like ripples on a pond. They reverberate out from person to person to person and beyond. You, yourself may never know the fifth or fiftieth person down the line whose life has been changed by your words. Just today several of my friends spent some time reading your posts, and likely they will share them as well.
“…what is your ‘why’?…The one that terrifies you. The one that won’t let you rest.” Writing is a part of it, not all of it. Your essay showed me what I think the components are of my “why” and something of how they fit together. And I want to let it all simmer a bit and see what bubbles to the surface that I may still be missing. It’s tempting to leap at the easy answer, and it might be true enough in a way. But I can be a little slow in putting it all together, feeling if it is real, or if what’s real is hiding behind, not quite ready to be seen.
Thank you for taking the risk to respond to your “why” with effort, heart, generosity, and an ineffable kindness.
This is one of those rare responses that feels like a conversation already begun, not just with me, but with yourself, and maybe even with something larger. Reading it, I felt the silent gravity of someone not rushing toward meaning, but circling it, respectfully, with eyes wide open. That’s beautiful, Doc!
You’re right: silence is one of the most ambiguous languages we know. It can be reverence or rejection, awe or apathy. And for those of us who write — who reach — it becomes a mirror we are forced to stare into, one that offers no confirmation, only the echo of our own voice. And yet, like you said so beautifully, that voice sometimes ripples. Quietly, invisibly, beyond us. That’s the maddening grace of this work, we often won’t witness its full resonance, but we must keep casting stones anyway.
I like that you are letting your “why” simmer. Most people try to plate it prematurely, hungry for clarity, allergic to uncertainty. But you are listening for the unready truth, the one that hasn’t yet taken shape. That’s a sort of spiritual patience most of us only learn after mistaking momentum for meaning too many times.
And here’s a thought to tuck into your reflection… sometimes the real “why” isn’t a noun (a cause, a career, a calling) but a verb. A way of being in the world. Maybe it’s how you listen. How you endure. How you love. The ripple may start from the writing, but the true wave comes from who you are while you write, what’s carried between the words.
Thank you for meeting my effort with such intelligent tenderness! It makes the silence feel less like a void and more like a threshold.
Hi Tamara, I have returned to this essay...again. I actually put parts of it in my notes app and I go through it many times. I just wanted to tell you how much this essay moved me to go deeper into the "whys" behind some of the goals and intentions I've set for myself for the next few months. I want to understand myself better, and it has been a lot of work (Hah! Who would have thought?).
I realised I needed to understand the values I'm chasing, rather than just the goals — basically, the "why". And this has helped me do things on a more regular basis to work towards those values, not just the goals. Anyway, all this to say that this essay was monumental for me. I always knew "why" was important, but your piece was the trigger point to actually do the work for myself. Thank you! I hope your writing keeps finding more readers, as it already is.
What a gift to read this, because it affirms my essay meant something, and because you’ve done what most people skim past: nod at the idea of a “why,” and more than that, you wrestled with it. For that, thank you!
You’ve tapped into something crucial: goals are often just costumes we put on, while values are the bones beneath them. And values, they’re not always glamorous, they don’t glitter on vision boards, and they demand humility, contradiction, the willingness to outgrow our old ambitions. But when we build from them, not just toward them, everything changes. Discipline becomes devotion. Consistency becomes clarity. And life stops feeling like a performance and starts feeling like a pilgrimage.
Here’s a little extra thread to braid into your thoughts: sometimes the “why” isn’t behind the goal at all,, it’s buried inside the résistance to it. The procrastination, the fear, the self-sabotage… all symptoms of an unconscious value saying, “Not like this. Not for those reasons”. And once we hear that, the real path opens up.
Thank you for returning to the essay and letting it return to you, Aakriti! That’s how writing becomes ritual.
This resonated with me sooo much. It’s like in the past I would rather do nothing and worry about what I should be doing instead of just starting something! Even if it’s small, it’s all about the process and not stopping
That mental purgatory between thought and action is a universal affliction, and the irony is, doing nothing is exhausting. We overthink ourselves into paralysis, convinced that the first step must be grand, polished, or perfect. But in truth, momentum isn’t born from brilliance, it is born from motion. Even a clumsy beginning outruns a beautifully theorised “maybe.” I’m glad it resonated, sounds like you’re already past the hardest part: starting.
I think this piece might be my favourite yet! Everybody should step off the hamster wheel, even for a brief moment, and read this.
Why are we here?
What matters?
Questions that require deep boredom and time alone, both rare and precious commodities in a world of always on inane distractions. Thank you for sharing.
I’m so moved this one was your favourite, especially coming from you, who clearly understands the cost of staying on the wheel too long. You’re right: questions like “Why are we here?” and “What matters?” don’t arrive in the clamour. They require space, silence, even. And yes, a touch of what you so brilliantly called “deep boredom.”
That type of boredom (the unfiltered, undistracted kind) is almost extinct. We’ve outsourced every pause, every empty moment, to a scroll or a screen. And yet, it’s in those empty spaces where the deeper questions sneak in. Without them, people are just performing life on autopilot, expertly dodging the very inquiry that could make it meaningful.
I love that you named time alone as a precious commodity. Because solitude, these days, is almost a defiant act. To sit still, undistracted, and ask something inconveniently existential of yourself…
Dear Tamara, your words aren’t just read, they are felt. This piece is more than an essay, I believe it’s a quiet revolution wrapped in prose. So much power in how you’ve stepped further into the personal here, that unmistakable pulse of vulnerability, of lived experience, of a truth finally claimed. I love that you’re becoming more personal in your writing — we, your readers, need and want that. It makes the philosophy real, the fire warm, the call to action irresistible. The shift from thinker to feeler, from theory to autobiography, is brave and it’s the exact magic that turns insight into impact.
What makes your writing shimmer is not just the sharp intelligence of your ideas, but the way you lace them with tenderness and candor. Your “why” no longer floats in abstraction, it is grounded, scarred, softened, human. That moment when you admit that the fear of being misunderstood was once stronger than the desire to be heard, honestly, I felt it in my ribs like a thunderclap.
And here’s something your piece made me realize: perhaps the “why” isn’t always a singular spark, but something we collect, moment by moment, story by story, like embers we guard through the night. Maybe it’s not just about discovering the fire, but learning how to tend it, protect it, feed it when the world tries to smother it with silence or ridicule. The “why” is both the ignition and the resilience. And when you write with this much clarity and courage, you’re handing us matches in the dark. You are truly amazing.
So thank you not just for writing, but for becoming (I wish I could write it with bolder letters) on the page. For offering your “why” not as a blueprint, but as a mirror, a dare, a quiet companion. We’ll meet you there, pen in hand, too.
What a fabulous essay!
Your words feel like the kind of response every writer dreams of but never dares to expect, not just a reading, but a RECOGNITION. Not just feedback, but a kind of sacred witnessing. You didn’t just “get” the essay, you entered it, Céline! Thank you!
I was especially struck by your reframing of the “why” — not as a singular spark, but as embers we gather and protect. That image will stay with me. You’re absolutely right: we romanticise the ignition moment, the lightning bolt of purpose, but so often, the truth is quieter. The “why” isn’t always fireworks. Sometimes it’s the barely-glowing coal we carry in cupped hands through wind and rain, hoping it stays lit long enough to build something warm around it.
And yes…. the shift you noticed, from idea to experience, from thinker to feeler, well, it terrified me. For years I thought my value was in the clarity of my thoughts, not the cracks in my voice. But as you so beautifully put it, the philosophy only becomes real when it’s rooted in the particular, in the bruises and missteps, in the autobiography of becoming. That’s where connection happens, not in the polish, but in the pulse.
You’ve handed me a match, too, a reminder that vulnerability doesn’t weaken the message, it animates it. Your phrase, “not as a blueprint, but as a mirror,” gave me goosebumps. That is the hope: not to instruct, but to reflect something back that the reader already suspected about themselves, but maybe hadn’t yet dared to name.
Thank you for this wondeful comment. For the care in your reading. For your generosity. I’ll carry this one with me. Pen in hand, I’ll meet you there too.
Your super power is connecting with people and connecting people. Truly formidable! And what’s even more amazing is that you are not even aware how easily you can connect with others. Your talent is one of a kind.
Merci de tout cœur!
This piece touches on something deeply personal, raw, and profoundly true: the necessity of knowing your "why." It’s easy to get lost in the endless "hows" of life—how to be successful, how to make an impact, how to be seen—but without the "why," these actions become hollow echoes. It’s like trying to build a skyscraper on a foundation made of sand. I think back to a time when I felt the same way, unsure about stepping into the unknown because the "how" of it all seemed daunting. But once I discovered my why, it became the lighthouse guiding me through the fog of self-doubt and indecision.
I once spent months crafting a project that I thought the world needed to see, only to realize it wasn’t the world that needed it—it was me. The moment I focused on the internal pull of my own passion instead of the external applause, the project came alive. It wasn’t about perfection, but about something truer: being authentic. I think the real beauty in writing—or in any act of creation—isn't in how it will be received, but in what it allows us to discover about ourselves. It’s a conversation with the world, but first, it's a conversation with ourselves.
The "how" will always be there—methods, techniques, strategies. But as you so eloquently point out, without a "why" to guide it, it’s just busywork. And I love that this piece doesn't sugarcoat the struggle: that the "why" often takes shape in moments of discomfort, questioning, and vulnerability. But it is in these moments where we begin to matter. And that is the ultimate act of courage: choosing to be seen when it feels like the world would prefer you remain hidden.
So, thank you, Tamara for sharing your “why”—it’s an invitation to us all to dig a little deeper, to ask not just what we’re doing, but why we’re doing it in the first place.
Your comment is like a second verse to the song: richer, deeper, harmonising without repeating. That image of the skyscraper on sand? Yes. That’s exactly it. We become architects of ambition with no grounding, wondering why the structure sways, why we feel dizzy at the top. “How” can build, but only “why” can anchor.
Your story about the project that wasn’t for the world but for you reminds me of something I once read in Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet”: “A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity.” When we create from that inner necessity rather than external validation, the work hums with a different kind of life. Even if the applause never comes, the resonance does.
You’re right to call writing a conversation, first with the self. Before it becomes performance, it is confession, confrontation, communion. Sometimes it’s even exorcism. And in that process, something shifts. We meet ourselves not as we wish to be, but as we are. And paradoxically, that nakedness becomes the most generous gift we can offer the world.
Thank you for seeing the struggle not as an obstacle but as an initiation. That discomfort you speak of is not a glitch in the system. It is the system. The chrysalis looks like death to the caterpillar, but it’s just the architecture of wings…..
And thank you for your presence here! For sharing your agreement, and above all your story. That’s what this space is for: not just monologues in the void, but echoes that know how to speak back. And by now, my readers know I love dialogue.
You thrive through dialogue. And when you are challenged, you simply bloom. One of a kind.
It depends who challenges me… there are some fellow writers who are brilliant in debating, and I love to be challenged by them. One in particular.
But you’ve noticed it right, dialogue inspires me.
I think I know the one who CAN challenge you in the most beautiful way.
The corollary to how is not why, it's want. It's an impulse. Actions almost never follow from "why", and you quickly discover that if you ever try to interrogate someone on why they're doing something that they're doing. And I mean, really cut through the cookie-cutter, canned, store-bought answers or platitudes. Impulse is temporary; pumping your emotional state with platitudes is fleeting; will-power is severely limited. The thing that will not only propel you, but that will drag you kicking, screaming, starving and desperate miles through the dirt, is the "why".
Impulse and emotional states are great for compelling action when necessity comes calling. The problem is that, if you live in a modern society, true necessity is nearly non-existent. You don't actually have to do much to survive, but our endocrine systems don't stop pumping out chemical imperatives, and so our impulses get increasingly frivolous with the lack of true privation.
The "why" only gets consideration after our basic needs have been met, and for most humans for most of history, this was an unobtainable position of privilege. In societies like ours, it's the norm, and we're completely lost because we have no unified theory or heuristic for how to discover the "why", especially as our societies have become more secular. So we increasingly distract and numb ourselves; people hoard wealth endlessly and consume; people work jobs or run businesses they hate, and they don't have the faintest idea why they're doing any of it, which leads to a profound frustration and dissatisfaction. And because they can't pinpoint the source, guilt sets in, and they insist the solution must be to double and triple down on that race to the bottom, deeper into a pit of self-delusion and circular logic, all because they've never really asked themselves "why".
Spectacular work, Tamara.
As always, your response doesn’t engage, it interrogates, expands, and leaves ash in its wake. You’re absolutely right to draw the distinction between impulse and why. So many confuse momentum with meaning. But as you eloquently laid out, the engine isn’t always what we think it is. Impulse might get the car moving, but only “why” decides the destination.
Your point about modernity and the absence of true privation struck a deep chord. Nowadays our survival no longer depends on instinct, yet our instincts still shout like it’s the Paleolithic. In that vacuum, frivolity floods in: the dopamine-drip of novelty, of status, of manufactured urgency. We become busy not out of necessity, but out of inertia — like ants on a steering wheel, mistaking movement for direction.
As for asking someone why they’re doing something… I agree, it often feels like dropping a match in a room full of gas leaks. It exposes the lack of foundations beneath carefully constructed lives. That’s not judgment, only grief. A grief that grows when, as you say, we double down on the very systems that hollowed us out in the first place. The absence of a coherent secular substitute for meaning is the unspoken wound of our time. You captured that so precisely, it’s honestly unsettling.
I think of Viktor Frankl here, how in the most extreme conditions, it wasn’t impulse or ideology that kept people alive, but MEANING. Not even always noble meaning, sometimes it was simply a promise, a memory, a future tether. A “why” so stubborn it pulled them through hell.
Thank you for this fierce, lucid reflection, Andrew! It makes me feel a little less alone in trying to write at the fault lines where philosophy, psychology, and raw human bewilderment meet. Let’s keep asking the only question that matters…. even when the answers evade us. Especially then!
The why is the burning bush that stops you in your tracks, grabbing your attention so tightly that you have to chase it. Once you see it and choose to ignore it, your life will be haunted by the weight of that call ignored.
This is the part where what we don't like comes in. We see the "why", we choose to go for it, and what we hate is what we encounter on the way down to the answer, while the answer itself brings us back up.
I always appreciate a personal touch and I resonate deeply with everything you said — especially the part about the "fear of trying". You also emphasised the fear of exposing your vulnerability, yet here you are showing it in full bloom.
Your vulnerabilities fuel your why and your why ignites the adjacent souls around you.
I'm grateful you found the courage to express yourself. I'm grateful I found you.
And love is both the "why" — and the "why not".
The image of the “burning bush” is arresting, biblical, yes, but also eerily accurate. The “why” does blaze, and you’re right: once seen, it cannot be unseen. To walk away from it is not neutrality, it’s exile. The haunting you speak of — I know it intimately. It’s the dull ache of unlived potential, of a voice unused, of pages never written.
What you say about descending into what we hate before being lifted by the answer reminds me of Dante. Before he could climb toward the stars, he had to walk through every circle of hell. Perhaps that’s what the “why” demands: a full confrontation with the shadows guarding the treasure.
Your line — “love is both the ‘why’ and the ‘why not’” — gave me chills. It’s the paradox, isn’t it? Love compels us to leap, and simultaneously makes the leap terrifying. Love of the work, love of truth, love of another person… they all carry that double-edged blade. I often wonder if we fear failure not just for ourselves, but for the ones we love watching us fall.
Thank you for reminding me that vulnerability isn’t only tolerated, but needed. It’s what stokes the fire that might warm someone else’s cold night. And thank you, sincerely, for seeing me. That’s all any writer ever hopes for, not to be agreed with, necessarily, but seen.
Soul to soul...
"We fear failure for the ones we love watching us fall".
It sounds to me like fear of letting them down, which, ultimately comes back to us, for the fear of disappointing someone is fueled by the way we think they may react to our failures — which, often times, is not how they react at all. The people that truly love us will be concerned by how to help us back up, not by conjuring ways to reprimand our mistakes. You've probably done a couple mistakes you thought would get you metaphorically killed, only to be met by a surprising amount of love and understanding. I certainly did, and it's a key moment in the course of any relationship.
Yes, “soul to soul” is exactly the right register for this.
You’ve touched on something so subtly deep here: the way our fear of failure is often tangled not just in ego, but in imagined projections. We don’t uniquely fear falling, we fear being watched as we fall. And more than that, we fear becoming a source of disappointment to those whose opinions we’ve internalised like sacred scripture.
You’re right, when love is true, its instinct isn’t judgment, but compassion. Real love rushes in like a hand extended, not a finger pointed. And yet, how often do we pre-emptively censor ourselves, assuming others will offer shame where they might, in fact, offer shelter? You’re speaking to one of the tragedies of human connection: the way we sometimes underestimate the generosity of those who love us, and overestimate their capacity for punishment.
I’ve absolutely had moments, as you say, where I braced for exile after a mistake… only to be met with grace instead. And isn’t that grace a kind of alchemy? It changes the nature of the relationship. You realise love wasn’t conditional after all, it was simply waiting for you to show up in your imperfect humanity. That kind of love is rare, but unforgettable. It’s the kind that makes you braver next time.
Thank you for reminding me, and anyone reading, that falling isn’t the failure. Refusing to let ourselves be seen while we’re down there? That’s where the real loss lives. You’ve added something essential to this conversation. Thank you!
T.-Another thought provoking and extremely well written essay. I was somewhat shocked to read about your doubts and fears as through your writing, none of that is/was apparent. You seem to have an uncommon amount of confidence, especially in your writing. So thank you for sharing yourself so openly and honestly. You’ve obviously read the comments of so many here and the sentiment is echoed-you have a gift for writing and connection. Personally, I give thanks to God for your writing and what you offer on this platform. I’ve read an incredible amount of literature, from a wide variety of sources and if asked for my favorite writer, currently, I’d say it is you! I’ve never found myself contemplating so many thoughts and ideas after reading anyone else’s writing, be it classic novels, short stories, poetry, etc., like I do after reading what you have written. So, I’m excited to see what you continue to do with your writing and I hope you’re encouraged by all of the wonderful people here who obviously feel the same way that I do. I love that you encourage others and you always offer true connection. God bless you and your writing!
I am honestly a little speechless… which, as you might imagine, is a rare state for me. To be named as someone’s favorite writer… especially someone who’s read widely and deeply… is not something I take lightly. Thank you for this praise, Billy, it’s a sort of blessing. Truly.
It’s funny (and maybe a little tragic) how confidence can live in the work while doubt paces the wings. I’ve always felt braver on the page than in life. Writing, for me, is where I can be both terrified and unshakable at once. The words come forward wearing a certain armour of clarity, but behind them, there’s often a very human mess of hesitation, fear, and hope. Maybe that’s what makes the connection real — not certainty, but sincerity.
What your message reminded me of (and what I’ll hold close) is that the whole reason I began to write publicly was not to project perfection, but to show what becomes possible when we dare to begin anyway. You’ve made me feel seen, not just as a writer, but as a person, one who still doubts, still wrestles, and still hopes that maybe the ache inside can be turned into something useful, something illuminating.
Your encouragement is oxygen. And yes, I read every comment, every reflection, because this isn’t just writing, it’s a conversation. A community. A shared reckoning. I’m grateful to God, too, for moments like this, reminders that what we do in honesty will find its way to the right hearts.
Thank you for meeting the words with such grace. And for reminding me that even when I tremble, I’m still exactly where I need to be.
My goodness, what a life-affirming, inspired conversation this essay has unleashed. Intelligent, supportive comments rousing one another reciprocally to ever higher heights and ever deeper depths like testimonials in a tent revival. It is so moving to witness. I was amen-ing and hallelujah-ing with each new paragraph. I felt reborn. I feel elevated. This piece has provoked such a beautiful, loving discussion. Thank you to the author for touching so many souls, and thanks to each participant for each amazing contribution. This is the quality of connection this platform was meant for. This is the quality of voices I hoped to find here. Love resides in this thread. I appreciate you all from the center of my being.
Your comment sings. I read it with a full heart and a grin I didn’t even realise had bloomed across my face. “Testimonials in a tent revival”…. I couldn’t have described it better if I tried. It really has felt like that, hasn’t it? Something between a literary sermon and a soul salon, with each voice raising the energy, not in noise, but in nuance, in love, in light.
Your words remind me why I dared to publish this piece in the first place, not just to write into the void, but to connect in exactly this way. To create a space where people could come home to themselves and recognise their own fire reflected in someone else’s language.
And you’re right — this thread has become more than commentary, it’s communion. These aren’t just replies, they’re revelations. I’ve been floored by the intelligence, tenderness, and fearless humanity in every single voice, yours included.
But in general my comment sections on both essays and Notes are marvellous and beyond engaging. Every single time.
So thank you for the hallelujahs, for the elevation, and for that line I’ll carry with me: “Love resides in this thread.” Yes, it does. And it expands with every word. I’m grateful, Andrew!
A beautiful explanation of so many things, to include life.
Many of us are pleased that you finally decided to cast these gems into the wild and let them be found, by those who've been combing the undergrowth for them.
Bravo for the courage and purpose Tamara!
… “casting gems into the wild”. It makes me think of a secret orchard where the fruit was ripening in silence for years, and now the branches are finally low enough for others to reach. I didn’t realise how many had been walking the same undergrowth, scanning the soil, hoping to stumble on something that might glint back with recognition.
Thank you for your words, and for calling it what it is: courage and purpose. One without the other can only take you so far. Courage might push you to speak, but purpose gives that speech gravity, shape, direction. Without it, the gems are just scattered. With it, they become trail markers.
And truthfully, it’s readers like you — quietly combing the thickets, showing up with open eyes and open hearts — who make the risk feel less like exposure, and more like offering. Thank you for meeting the words where they landed!
It’s a true pleasure!!🙏🙏
Your perception amazes me at times. Yes, in several ways this conversation began before I wrote the comment - in one way, as soon as I read this and began letting it work on me, then when I sat down and wrote about what I thought the components might be and some of the surrounding glimmerings of why they fit together. That’s when I moved into the conversation with you through my comment.
In another way, it’s been a lifelong conversation, of “mistaking momentum for meaning too many times.” Probably the funniest conclusion to one of my false leads was when I decided in college that I wanted to direct in the theatre. I directed five plays starting in my sophomore year, graduated and found work in the theatre, and one day really looked at the process of what I was doing and realized that I loved choosing the right play, the right cast, talking with them about it, and I just couldn’t fathom what was bothering me. Then it hit me and the immediate reaction was, “Oh, shit. I don’t really enjoy rehearsals!” Yeah, kind of a problem when you’re directing a play if you’re not into rehearsing. 🙄
The discussion of silence always reminds me of Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons - “Silence betokens consent.” Of course, he meant in the law, and though his argument was sound, the human factor meant his head would roll, literally, no matter what the law said. I think we are conditioned to interpret silence as rejection or disapproval, and in my experience, it often is. Maybe as much as we rush to define our “why” we also rush to interpret another’s silence, act on our interpretation instead of asking why (a different kind of why), and sometimes fall off the cliff into a silent war that no one ever intended to start. Once I acknowledged I wasn’t as good a mind reader as I’d thought, I started asking instead of assuming. I didn’t always hear what I wanted to hear, but at least I was in a conversation, not a monologue in my head.
Thank you for the thought about the “why” possibly being a verb. I have tucked it into my reflection as you suggested, and it’s like a cup of hot chocolate in front of the fire during a snowstorm - warming, comforting, and adding just the right flavor to the mix.
“Intelligent tenderness.” It’s hard to believe you mean me when you write those words, and it means a great deal. I also like the thought of silence being a threshold. Everything then, is possible…
Your response is such a generous continuation, not just of the conversation, but of the very spirit behind my essay: that our “why” isn’t a static answer, but a living dialogue with the self. And you model that with such grace, humour, and, yes, intelligent tenderness.
Your theatre story is brilliant, not only because it’s funny in that silently devastating way false paths often are, but because of the precision of your realisation. Most people only feel the friction; you actually located its source. It’s amazing to say, “I love the idea of this, but not the living of it.” That’s not a failure, it is craftsmanship of the self.
The Thomas More line… a piercing reminder that even legally sound logic can’t protect us from human irrationality. I think you’re correct, we are wired to fear silence because it creates a vacuum, and the human brain loathes a vacuum. So it fills it, usually with worst-case projections. We become playwrights of imaginary offenses, scripting entire acts around a silence that may have meant nothing at all.
What you said about mind-reading hit me hard. It’s one of the great self-sabotages of intimacy, isn’t it? We fall in love with our own interpretations, not the other person. And suddenly we are trapped in monologues we mistake for dialogue. The courage to ask instead of assume, that’s a whole new level of relational literacy. Most people never get there… sadly.
As for the hot chocolate metaphor? That’s exactly what I hope my writing offers, answers or provocations, but something that warms without numbing. Something that holds space.
Thank you, Doc, for coming back to the fire. Keep adding logs. I’ll be here :)
“…one of the great self-sabotages of intimacy…” Oh yes! And I love the notion of “being trapped in monologues we mistake for dialogue.” Well, I don’t love it at all, but I do love how you phrased it. I could be so proud of myself, creating the dialogue in my mind (like Bottom, playing all the parts), and if challenged when I confronted someone with my conclusions, I’d happily provide the evidence I’d piled up (well, that law degree did prove useful at times). The problem is that if you only meet someone with your conclusions, how else can they react but defensively? They’ve no idea you had this whole Shakespearean drama going on in your head. To them, it’s come out of the blue.
Fortunately, I had someone who stopped me in my tracks by saying, “Why didn’t you ask if that was what they meant?” Then I saw that the responsibility for the whole thing being a disaster of communication fell squarely on my shoulders. I suppose, in a way, I used the silence as a weapon to get my story written (in my head) first, as if that somehow made it more accurate.
Asking the question, even if it makes me vulnerable, even if I might sound foolish (and I’ve had an auditorium full of hundreds of people laugh when I asked a very basic question of a speaker, but the speaker was totally there for it and gave me an incredible and wise answer), has opened up a kind of intimacy that isn’t possible when I do all the talking in my mono/dialogue.
Sometimes, the questions I have to ask myself create an internal intimacy that doesn’t exist otherwise. A few hours ago I was talking with a friend about your essay and the things it’s brought up for me, and I mentioned a piece of writing I’d put away a month or so ago. Asking myself about the why, illuminated what I’d done to make that writing impossible - I’d developed a structure for it that would create layers, and then there were these other related layers and somehow I’d built a scaffold that looked more like a 2-year old’s Tinkertoy, and made the Leaning Tower of Pisa look upright.
When I looked beneath the layers and structures and asked why, I found something that terrified me that I’d tried to bury under everything I could pile on. Do I have any idea what is really there and what to do with it? Hell, no. I need to give it room to breathe and tell me what we need to do - together. And yes, you provided the spark for that excavation, and the terrified part of me wanted to douse you and the spark with a bucket of water. But most of me breathed a sigh of both relief and resignation that my questions about that work were finding a way toward resolution, and that more work, laced with vulnerability and honesty, lay ahead.
Keep those ripples coming, my friend. I’ll be here too.
How wonderfully you write, Doc! Thank you for all these incredible exchanges. I am beyond grateful to have a dialogue with you.
This is piercing. Your unflinching soul-searching inspires me and your conclusions/challenges are devastating. “…’why’ must be earned. It is the spiritual cousin of suffering, forged in the crucible of curiosity, failure, longing, absurdity, and sometimes even despair.” Your own example of failure (and I imagine a bit of despair) when you sent a friend a short story and the lack of response made you wonder if you’d sent her your laundry list made me laugh out loud, even while I ached inside for the pain of that silence. Silence can mean so much that is wonderful, and yet cut so damn deep.
“writing…it is about the impact of one voice, one story, one soul brushing against another.” What is both wonderful and frustrating is that the impact of your writing is like ripples on a pond. They reverberate out from person to person to person and beyond. You, yourself may never know the fifth or fiftieth person down the line whose life has been changed by your words. Just today several of my friends spent some time reading your posts, and likely they will share them as well.
“…what is your ‘why’?…The one that terrifies you. The one that won’t let you rest.” Writing is a part of it, not all of it. Your essay showed me what I think the components are of my “why” and something of how they fit together. And I want to let it all simmer a bit and see what bubbles to the surface that I may still be missing. It’s tempting to leap at the easy answer, and it might be true enough in a way. But I can be a little slow in putting it all together, feeling if it is real, or if what’s real is hiding behind, not quite ready to be seen.
Thank you for taking the risk to respond to your “why” with effort, heart, generosity, and an ineffable kindness.
This is one of those rare responses that feels like a conversation already begun, not just with me, but with yourself, and maybe even with something larger. Reading it, I felt the silent gravity of someone not rushing toward meaning, but circling it, respectfully, with eyes wide open. That’s beautiful, Doc!
You’re right: silence is one of the most ambiguous languages we know. It can be reverence or rejection, awe or apathy. And for those of us who write — who reach — it becomes a mirror we are forced to stare into, one that offers no confirmation, only the echo of our own voice. And yet, like you said so beautifully, that voice sometimes ripples. Quietly, invisibly, beyond us. That’s the maddening grace of this work, we often won’t witness its full resonance, but we must keep casting stones anyway.
I like that you are letting your “why” simmer. Most people try to plate it prematurely, hungry for clarity, allergic to uncertainty. But you are listening for the unready truth, the one that hasn’t yet taken shape. That’s a sort of spiritual patience most of us only learn after mistaking momentum for meaning too many times.
And here’s a thought to tuck into your reflection… sometimes the real “why” isn’t a noun (a cause, a career, a calling) but a verb. A way of being in the world. Maybe it’s how you listen. How you endure. How you love. The ripple may start from the writing, but the true wave comes from who you are while you write, what’s carried between the words.
Thank you for meeting my effort with such intelligent tenderness! It makes the silence feel less like a void and more like a threshold.
I love your writing. Thank you for bringing it to life. I’m benefiting from it 💛
Thank you so much, Cassandra!
Hi Tamara, I have returned to this essay...again. I actually put parts of it in my notes app and I go through it many times. I just wanted to tell you how much this essay moved me to go deeper into the "whys" behind some of the goals and intentions I've set for myself for the next few months. I want to understand myself better, and it has been a lot of work (Hah! Who would have thought?).
I realised I needed to understand the values I'm chasing, rather than just the goals — basically, the "why". And this has helped me do things on a more regular basis to work towards those values, not just the goals. Anyway, all this to say that this essay was monumental for me. I always knew "why" was important, but your piece was the trigger point to actually do the work for myself. Thank you! I hope your writing keeps finding more readers, as it already is.
What a gift to read this, because it affirms my essay meant something, and because you’ve done what most people skim past: nod at the idea of a “why,” and more than that, you wrestled with it. For that, thank you!
You’ve tapped into something crucial: goals are often just costumes we put on, while values are the bones beneath them. And values, they’re not always glamorous, they don’t glitter on vision boards, and they demand humility, contradiction, the willingness to outgrow our old ambitions. But when we build from them, not just toward them, everything changes. Discipline becomes devotion. Consistency becomes clarity. And life stops feeling like a performance and starts feeling like a pilgrimage.
Here’s a little extra thread to braid into your thoughts: sometimes the “why” isn’t behind the goal at all,, it’s buried inside the résistance to it. The procrastination, the fear, the self-sabotage… all symptoms of an unconscious value saying, “Not like this. Not for those reasons”. And once we hear that, the real path opens up.
Thank you for returning to the essay and letting it return to you, Aakriti! That’s how writing becomes ritual.
Such a stunning and original piece. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you so much for reading it, Augustus, and for connecting with my thoughts!
This resonated with me sooo much. It’s like in the past I would rather do nothing and worry about what I should be doing instead of just starting something! Even if it’s small, it’s all about the process and not stopping
That mental purgatory between thought and action is a universal affliction, and the irony is, doing nothing is exhausting. We overthink ourselves into paralysis, convinced that the first step must be grand, polished, or perfect. But in truth, momentum isn’t born from brilliance, it is born from motion. Even a clumsy beginning outruns a beautifully theorised “maybe.” I’m glad it resonated, sounds like you’re already past the hardest part: starting.
Thank you!
100%!
Oooh, you land some hard point—if not virtual blows—with this one. Wonderful and challenging essay.
Thank you so much! It’s more personal than my usual, maybe that is why :)
I think this piece might be my favourite yet! Everybody should step off the hamster wheel, even for a brief moment, and read this.
Why are we here?
What matters?
Questions that require deep boredom and time alone, both rare and precious commodities in a world of always on inane distractions. Thank you for sharing.
I’m so moved this one was your favourite, especially coming from you, who clearly understands the cost of staying on the wheel too long. You’re right: questions like “Why are we here?” and “What matters?” don’t arrive in the clamour. They require space, silence, even. And yes, a touch of what you so brilliantly called “deep boredom.”
That type of boredom (the unfiltered, undistracted kind) is almost extinct. We’ve outsourced every pause, every empty moment, to a scroll or a screen. And yet, it’s in those empty spaces where the deeper questions sneak in. Without them, people are just performing life on autopilot, expertly dodging the very inquiry that could make it meaningful.
I love that you named time alone as a precious commodity. Because solitude, these days, is almost a defiant act. To sit still, undistracted, and ask something inconveniently existential of yourself…
Thank you, Paul!
How does everyone manage to write such comments! Wow!
My comment sections are always memorable :) I have amazing subscribers. And I am very grateful!