Let me see what I wrote so I know what I think

W.H. Auden once said, “Let me see what I wrote so I know what I think”. Sounds strange right?

Well maybe Auden was biased, his thoughts were deeply inspired by his lifelong learning in writing and his passion for it. OR maybe not?

Warren Buffet said that writing is one key way of refining his thought. The same was said by Bill Gates that writing is his way to sit, write and reevaluate his thoughts.

The obvious question if it is your thought, then why on earth do you want it to write, and even if you do, why the studies have proven again and again that you will be able to refine it more? Just to answer that Stefanie Spera and Eric Buhrfeind conducted a study with James Pennebaker on 63 individuals who lost their job. The study was published in 2017 in the Academy of Management Journal. The study unveils that the group of people who were randomly assigned an expressive or abstract writing task were able to keep themselves happier. 62% more people got a job in just one month of writing while the control group took more than 3-6 months to attain 28% of placements and jobs.

According to various studies conducted later on the benefits of writing state that:

It improves communication skills

It improves the endurance for pain: One person in a qualitative study for the same outcome stated that even though nobody helps me in bad emotional phases but I am still able to cope because of notes. I read those notes after a few days and somehow it looks like the problem was more in my head rather than in real life. Writing activates the same areas in the brain which are active when we are with our family or friend or when we exercise. It has been found that so many contrast locations for example the area when the body is in cool down and relax mode and the area that is responsible for exercise becomes light up at the same time when we write. Writing keeps the brain alive and busy and stimulates various parts at once and reduces plasticity of it. It closes all the chrome tabs of thoughts that were kept open in the brain with the hope of getting back to those tabs and no one ever went there. It has been found that the people who write are more receptive, they can align and state their thoughts well.

Some people have argued that reading a book can not generate the same level of knowledge development as writing can do. Simply being a curator of a book, thought or idea is less helpful. Writing helps in communicating the tougher ideas. But the practice that has been there with us for the past many centuries has been put to limited use.

The practice of sending long letters has stopped and it has now been taken over by the LOL and LMFAO jargons with emojis that are interpreted differently by all individuals. Writing has been transferred to mundane tasks like email replies.

It is known that the brain activates the frontal lobe as decision-making is a continuous job and when we are writing it is like we have put decision-making on a marathon along with the hippocampus that helps fetch the long-term memories. Writing involves the inspiration of our long-term memories of words, learnings and memories. It also activates Broca and Wrenkicke’s Area for comparative analysis.

Well, that somehow sums up our consciousness too. Writing has been closely associated with the studies done on consciousness.

So, when I say that we have replaced a Dear Diary with an Evernote, a letter filled with expressions of love, hope, and memories with an emoji that is sticking its tongue out or an emoji that is laughing and crying at the same time. Have we given up on the process of being conscious too, was this the only process of being conscious, or do we have more activities to offer the level of brain activity as done by writing?

This remains a matter of discussion for “some other day” just like those open chrome tabs where no one’s going to get back any time soon.