I’ve been thinking about where the impulse to write originates. Not in a macro-literary sense, like “what causes people in general to write,” but in the sense of what drives me to write. It’s not a new question, but it is one for which the answer is always changing.

In exploring why I write, perhaps I’m bucking the words of Joan Didion, who described the impulse as “a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.” She goes on to suggest it begins “in the cradle” – which I come closer to believing each day.

I trace it back in my own life, over and over. I usually settle somewhere in my early childhood, during which I had tremendous difficulty learning to read and write. Then I string it forward a bit, adopting the notion that we tend to value the things we fight hardest to obtain or achieve. And maybe that’s where I fell in love with scribbling words on paper, where I decided this is something that might fulfill my creative urges. And yet there’s a part of me that can’t accept the value in what I create.

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just a question lingering in my mind for the past few years – and I’m not really sure what the answer is.

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thank you for the things
none of us will ever need
that draw us like sheep

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may we always be
grateful recipients of
all we’ve been given

I wasn’t going to adorn this post with any extra words, because every time I sat down to try to sort through another explanation, the vectors of unruly thought seemed to get stronger.

But I started writing this post in resistance to that idea – determined to fight the vectors, determined to make this one of those rare occasions when I might actually overcome them. Maybe pulling so hard in the opposite direction is what makes it such a challenge.

I recently finished the book Delivered from Distraction. Coincidentally, I also just heard two excellent speakers at last week’s TEDx Philly event – both speaking on the subject of our broken education system – who echoed something from Dr. Hallowell’s iconic book on ADD. Pretty early on in Hallowell’s book, he supposes that it would be better to find what you’re good at and hone those skills than to focus so much on what you aren’t prone to doing well.

Chris Lehman, who heads the Science Leadership Academy, noted that our education system tests to figure out what we’re good at, and what we’re bad at. Then, instead of focusing on building the skills we naturally possess, the system looks to help children achieve mediocrity in the skillsets they aren’t naturally good at. Or something like that. The idea spouted by Lehman was later seconded by Simon Hauger, who heads some pretty incredible educational efforts at West Philadelphia High School (where they’ve finished rather well against high level collegiate and professional teams in the last couple HybridX competitions). Both Chris and Simon are educators who believe in the value of building kids up in the areas where they are already are prone to succeed.

I’ve been thinking that building up people in the areas where they can really shine sure beats struggling for mediocrity in areas they’ll never be passionate about. Seems like a much better recipe for all kinds of success — professionally, personally and academically.

It was around the time that I let myself think about that simple key that this post stopped feeling like a struggle. I’m thinking the vectors stopped pulling because I stopped pulling so desperately against them. Maybe.

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