Why I Write: An Argument for Effort

For nearly eight months now, I have participated in the Rising Voices Fellowship with the Jewish Women’s Archive, and for nearly eight months now, I have asked myself, “What drives me to keep writing? Why put in the effort when it's not needed? What does that extra effort reward me with?” After eight months of writing about my identity, history, and perspectives on the world, I believe that I finally have an answer: Because it is central to who I am. Everything good in life takes effort; it's impossible to feel true pride for an action that didn’t take a little blood, sweat, or tears. I believe, therefore, that I write because it is the most human thing in the world to do. There is nothing I can do but write because it is simply in my nature to express myself in this way. Edwidge Danticat once said that “there is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you,” and I could not agree more. 

To be human requires us to question our existence and its purpose. The way that we find out how we exist is reflected in those around us; therefore, we reflect ourselves in the people we surround ourselves with and the ideas we express. Humans, at the end of the day, are simply a collection of stories to be told; without a story or someone to tell it to, we lose our humanity. Therefore, to write our stories is to be human itself. This is why I write: it draws the line between existing and truly living. 

Since I believe that writing is a uniquely human experience, I have great difficulty accepting how society is integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into so many facets of human life. Artificial intelligence is already well known for its extremely intensive water use and detrimental environmental impact, but it is also detrimental to the psyche. Studies have shown that as artificial intelligence use rises for the individual, the less they use their brain and demonstrate care for future tasks; therefore, the more we accept AI usage as normal and integrate it into our daily lives and work, the more our brains forget how to do basic functions of learning that it built up over years of effort and care. AI also has the added effect of damaging our understanding of basic human interaction and expectation of correctness through a constant validation of ideas, whether they are inherently wrong or not. This is known as a state of psychosis where people lose sight of reality because their conversations with AI are reflections of themselves. They get caught in an echo chamber and often have trouble finding their way out. This is what terrifies me so much: AI can make us forget how to be human, emotionally and psychologically. We write and create as an outlet of human expression, but the more we dull that expression through a reliance on technology, the more we forget the benefits of effort. 

After all, history is shaped by the writing that shifted and swayed entire peoples. When the Holy Roman Empire was selling its way into heaven, Martin Luther wrote his 95 Theses to sway them and shift the public sphere. When the United States was forming as a nation, the Founding Fathers used the Constitution to govern, and when people weren’t following that, The Federalist Papers were written in its defense, shifting the public perspective on its necessity. When systemic and normalized racism plagued the US through segregation, many people didn’t understand the fight of the Civil Rights Movement until Martin Luther King Jr. put pen to paper and wrote one of the most famous speeches of all time: I Have a Dream. When a shift back towards nuclear families and further subjugating women in the 1970s became the norm in the US, Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique to shift the public eye and start conversations. All of a sudden, modern media included more depictions of women in roles outside of the doting housewife, and the book became a household title, even coming up years later in movies such as 10 Things I Hate About You. 

Since the invention of writing, it has been used as a tool for change and progress. If we were to forget how to write, we would forget how to communicate, fight, create change, and be human entirely. If AI is writing for you, what are you still doing for yourself? What are you gaining from the experience without the learning, knowledge, or effort that writing brings? No, writing is not easy, because it's not meant to be. Writing this very article took me over a week of procrastination past my deadline, because putting my thoughts onto paper was scary and difficult, which made them real and solid. All of a sudden, everything that drifted around in my mind aimlessly had a place, and could connect itself within the branches of an ever-growing tree. It helped me come to terms with the fact that writing is a part of who I am, that the effort that writing and editing takes is a small bit of who I am as a person. Writing takes care, effort, and concentration, so of course, it is easier to have something else do it for you, but then, you’ll miss the satisfaction of true completion. Everything in life that is worthwhile takes effort; writing is just one example of that.  To write is to admit that you don’t know everything, but to accept that you are willing and ready to learn. Toni Morrison, one of my favorite authors of all, eloquently captured this idea when she said, “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”