{"id":1295,"date":"2019-02-11T22:28:56","date_gmt":"2019-02-11T22:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/endlesshybrids.com\/?p=1295"},"modified":"2019-02-11T22:28:56","modified_gmt":"2019-02-11T22:28:56","slug":"the-purpose-of-doing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/endlesshybrids.com\/personal\/the-purpose-of-doing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Purpose of Doing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Late afternoon, I sit at my desk, just after class. I glance up at the prints from Buenos Aires that hang on the wall in front of me. More than a decade ago I blogged so regularly<\/a>. More free time in those days as I explored a premature semi-retirement in my early 40s. Yesterday, on my walk over the footbridge into campus, I thought about my eight-year old daughter and the thoughts that recur to me time and again: what will she know of my life, what will she know of what’s in my mind?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last week, I asked the students in my first-year composition course to take out a sheet of paper and to reflect for a few moments on a simple question: why write?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a simple exercise, merely a prop to prompt their mental alertness at 8:30 in the morning. As a class we discussed their responses. People write because they have something to say. Writing is a way of thinking through a topic. Writing as a way of participating in a conversation. What is left out of the world if one doesn’t write? I feel haunted by that question. <\/p>\n\n\n\n How even now I wish I could know more of my own child’s thoughts. Not the secret feelings found in a diary. No, not that. We all have, must have, thoughts that are merely our own. But those broader thoughts that form so much of who we are as a person. There is so much of myself hidden away. So much that will only be found in the expressions that I leave behind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n