Intro

In the past few weeks and months, people have asked me why I do X or Y. In one case, it’s being on the Crew team, and only being a coxswain. In another case, someone asked me why I don’t want to monetize a personal project of mine.

For reference, being a coxswain on a crew team means you are leading the (typically 8) oarsmen in a boat, instead of actually rowing yourself. It was hard for me to describe why it was worth it, even though I felt that it was a fulfilling position to be in.

The ask

Being asked why you do something is a funny question, because either the answer seems so obvious yet is quite difficult to put into words, or there isn’t really an answer. Furthermore, asking yourself why you do something is a little like Einstein’s theory of observing things - by observing something, you change the state of it.

We all have these habits that are so engrained into our daily rituals that we don’t question them anymore. Either it was justified eariler, and that justification simply doesn’t need to be revisited, or maybe there was no justification, and it just started happening. By simply thinking about why you started to do something inadvertently affects your continued thoughts of a habit. Without thinking about it, you would have continued to do the same thing.

I’m finding a lot of relations to the laws of physics. In this case, Newton’s 1st law of of motion would apply here: “Objects in motion tend to stay in motion.” Or, as I like to put it,

Habits unquestioned tend to stick.

In some cases it is smart to question your own habits, to change your routine for the better, but other times, it’s for the worse. You forgot why you initially did something, and either you re-discover that why, or it’s lost to time. The circumstances that sparked the habit initially may never return.

The rabbit hole

That’s all for the case of “I don’t know why I do something the way I do”. There’s a second case of the “why do you do something” question, and that’s where you know the answer. It’s part of your being, your code, your way of justifying nearly everything that you’ve done before in life.

To put it into words is to attempt to compress your life’s cumulative experiences into maybe 30 seconds of verbal something. And for what? Half the time, it’s a longer answer than the other person was expecting. They’re listening to you, and now they have to try and compare this compressed version of your personal manifesto to something they can understand in their own, completely different mind. People are quick to make their impressions, and once it’s made, it’s unlikely that whatever mountain of information you plan to dump on them will change it.

Sometimes, people’s thought processes are completely incompatible. One person values X. Another person values Y. Neither understand completely why the other person thinks the way they do. Explanations are pointless.

And the worst part about compressing? Those words stick. The way you verbalized some justification, the exact adjectives used to describe why something’s important, why it means so much to you? The other person isn’t likely to remember exactly what you said, but the strength of those initially used words is now the standard, and you’re likely to use them to describe the same thing to someone else.

And just like that, you’ve compressed not only the description of your mind, but the words are subconsciously embedded next to your “why” for a long time.

The labels limit you.

The words are only a representation of your mind’s inner workings, just like a photo is only a 2D representation of the 3D world that we live in. Once you start comparing your thoughts to the words, you’ve lost what made them 3-dimensional.

So to those that ask why, and for those that are asked why - understand that the answer may not be words. Words represent something more, and if the why was always just some words, well, than, it’s no why at all.

And lastly, to answer why I didn’t monetize a personal project, I have an answer. While the answer is still just words, my job has been made easier because someone else has written the words for me. This post is about monetizing a blog, but the final remarks relate to me.

“If we are not writing to make money, what are we writing for?”

My answer? An answer that has been so commodified and informalized by today’s culture, yet still holds a genuine sentiment? A reasonable compression of my thoughts and reasons?

For the love of the game.