Today, I asked myself a question: What exactly is my reason for writing and publishing my blog? At first, the question seemed so stupid to me. But on a second thought, these "stupid" thoughts, and let's give them a more respectable name: philosophical questions, are fundamental, and we would avoid a lot of unfortunate mistakes if we devoted a little of our time to answer them, instead of acting (in this case writing the blog) or not acting (not writing the blog). Did I remind you: "To be or not to be"? So, I switched from this question to questions like, "Why do I do anything?" and "What do I live for?"
I write this blog both for myself and for you:
First of all, dear readers, know that when I wrote this post, like all the other blog posts, I thought of both myself and you. I write only questions that it seems that if I ask myself, then chances are that many of you ask yourself, even if you have never formulated these questions for yourselves explicitly. The same goes for the problems: I mention my problems only if I have at least found a beginning of a solution to them. I do not bring them up to complain and gain pity, but to help others and myself.
So why did I write this blog?
1) To pass the time
I am pre-retired, live on my own, and am alone in the apartment 95% of the time. In order never to get bored, I prepared a variety of activities for myself on the computer. I act on this priority:
- The activities I must do or that have been scheduled for me.
- The activities I like to do the most (and blogging is one of them).
- All other activities.
2) To express myself
The need to express yourself is fundamental in a man. If we do not find out what we feel and think, whether it is in writing as I do here, or orally, then our thoughts are not helpful. They remain vague in the depths of our souls. The result is that we act on instinct, the thought of the passing moment, and let others think and decide for us.
I will here address the question: When do I write? The answer is: when I have something to say that seems appropriate to me for the post. I never sit down at my desk and think: "What am I going to write about today?", because it's a known way to write a bad post. Sometimes weeks go by in which I do not write anything, and I even live with the feeling that my blog is finished and I have nothing more to write. But experience has taught me, and I have been working on my blog for over a year, that new topics are always popping up that I was not aware I was thinking about.
3) To make friends.
I have noticed that when I express myself, I understand myself better, hence understand others better, hence others, whether these are friends or rivals, understand me better. It was not by chance that Socrates was repeating the phrase, "Know thyself!"
4) Maybe, to get famous
I admit I have such thoughts too. I like to get likes and positive comments on what I have written. But publicity is a reward we receive for our hard work, and it must not be an end in itself, and being known has not only advantages but disadvantages. Take, for example, celebrities. I sometimes find myself jealous of them, but when I dig a little deeper, I have nothing to envy them about. Their privacy, secrets, and mistakes they have made in the past are sliced in front of everyone. I once read: "Celebrities are people who turn worlds so that people will recognize them on the street, and when that moment finally arrives, wear black glasses so that will be no longer recognized."
5) Accept different opinions and experiences about the issues I have presented
In this blog, I present the problems and solutions I have found for them. On top of that, I express my opinions. I'm very interested in hearing other people's opinions, whether they agree or disagree with me. I also want them to complete my knowledge and correct possible inaccuracies in what I have written.
In that sense, I'm a little disappointed in the meantime. I indeed got a lot of sympathetic feedback from the people I was in touch with and introduced to the blog. I also got interesting comments on Facebook, and many signed up for the blog, but almost no one posted me a comment from the blog. Maybe I'm the one who should be blamed: I may open a forum in the future to allow blog readers to reply and chat with each other.
Why did I not write this blog?
Money, for example, is not one of my motives for writing this blog. On the contrary, it cost me a lot of time and money. If I find a way to make money from blogging in the future, why not? But what I said about advertising is also true about money: it is a mean and not an end in itself. I can tell you that to write the blog, I sometimes did internet searches with words such as depression, anxiety, etc. I have often come across pages saturated with texts whose sole purpose was to take advantage of readers' distress, which directed them to download a paid page where there is supposedly an answer to all their questions. My attitude is not like that at all: if I work on something, I ask, of course, for a salary, but once it is determined, I give my all without petty and self-interested thoughts such as: "Am I not revealing too many things?" (Sometimes, I do not succeed in what I do, but that's a different story). This is what the sages called: "To do things for heaven's sake."
I love the lyrics of Enrico Macias' song "Donnez-moi": "Give, give, give, God will reward you." In my opinion, one who does his work only with self-interested thoughts does not make a worthwhile calculation. I do not know if God will reward us as the song's lyrics say, or if it is merely a matter of logic. Nowadays, people have offered the general public search engine services, encyclopedias, music, and social networks. All these services are provided for free. And what happened to those who developed and offered these services? Were they impoverished? No and no! They have become billionaires!
Why did I still hesitate before writing what I wrote?
I asked myself if I was not exposing myself too much in all these confessions and if I would not be easy prey for the wicked who mock the weak? I may be wrong but my life experiences have shown me that it's not the case: I was ridiculed precisely when I tried unsuccessfully to hide my weaknesses. When I express them and deal with them in public, I gain empathy from those who identify with me. And as for the wicked ones I mentioned earlier, they are silent lest they be asked to expose themselves as well, something they are not prepared for in any way.
When will I say that I have achieved my goal, and I can move on to something else?
I don't know. As long as I have ideas for posts, technical improvements on the site, and activities to spread the blog, I keep going.
Let's lay out the canvas for broader questions.
The question about my blog's purpose connects to a more general question, which I asked myself when I was a child: Why do we live? If you read what I wrote in the post "My vision of death", then I think there is nothing after death (other than that our psyche continues to affect other souls). At the same time, despite all the difficulties in life, I think it makes sense to live life, do things, and fail at them sometimes until you succeed in them.
The experience of 64 years of my life so far has taught me that there is no unequivocal answer and certainly no answer, which is correct for everyone to the question: "What are we living for, when we know we will die anyway." The answer we give to this question is different for each of us and changes with us over the years, with our experiences, with the accumulation of our feelings and thoughts, in short with our experience.
But we need to ask ourselves at all times what we are doing on earth, if only so as not to pursue nonsense. I have never been so tempted by crime, alcohol, drugs. And I knew how to back off from mistakes I made in the past. Some goals are legitimate, such as: making a decent living from a respectable profession, being loved by people, finding the love of our lives, having children and then raising them, getting famous, getting an education, having fun. But we need to know that no one can achieve everything and that all kinds of people (individuals or most of them) achieve things we do not, should not prevent us from being happy.
Summary
In this post, I asked myself why I am writing this blog. I have discussed this question for me, and I hope for you, a model for exploring the question: why do we do anything in life.