I’m often asked why I write personal pieces. It can feel a bit like doing “public shadow work.” One possibility: I am avoiding real intimacy. Another: I simply can’t help myself (exhibitionism?). But deep down, I do it because I think it matters.
Few things touch me like when a reader opens up in conversation in response to something I’ve written. That fills me with a renewed sense of urgency. And it is, I believe, what our age demands.
“I’ve just come to realize AI is smarter than I am. This is an existential moment, akin to what Kasparov felt in 1997 when he realized Deep Blue was going to beat him at chess,” screenwriter and director Paul Schrader wrote on Facebook.
Is this the end of the road for writing and storytelling? I don’t think so.
How to write better is an interesting question, but not nearly as compelling as why write at all?
Imagine asking ChatGPT how to live a good life when you could ask yourself what you want your life to be about. Information is a commodity and AI will answer (or read my piece about happiness). But that’s not what I’m interested in. I don’t want to live a good life — I want to live mine.
There’s nothing wrong with seeking happiness and comfort. But I know there is more to life than a generic version of “meaningful work and relationships.” I want to meet my destiny.
Don’t you?
If you ask me, our collective story is failing. The world as we know it is dying, metaphorically speaking, and we have entered some kind of transitional twilight zone (Buddhists would call it the Bardo, the time between death and rebirth). And we don’t get to exit this place until we re-write our story.
Is AI going to do it? More likely, we will lose ourselves in a new world of infinite personalized distraction. We will be bombarded with more entertainment than you could consume in a thousand incarnations.
Perhaps AI will be a game changer for the top tier creators, people like Schrader, more important even than the invention of the Espresso machine. Maybe the power of their new second brain will turn them into hyper-creators capable of weaving a new myth for us all. I’m not counting on that.
I think the writing we desperately need relies on an inner encounter with truth. This is something that can be done by anyone except AI.
“I am a big believer in not letting robots dream for us,” actor Nicolas Cage just told Variety. “The job of all art in my view, is to hold a mirror to the external and internal stories of the human condition,” he added.
“If we let robots do that, it will lack all heart and eventually lose edge and turn to mush. There will be no human response to life as we know it. It will be life as robots tell us to know it. I say, protect yourselves from AI interfering with your authentic and honest expressions.”
That’s it.
AI will beat us at creating entertainment. If that’s your job, AI will help you do it better. But does it know what feels urgent and intimate to you? Can it turn on the light in you and everyone you meet?
This is why I tell anyone asking me about writing to go in the opposite direction.
Close the prompt window. In fact, close the computer and turn off your phone.
Pick up pen and paper.
Take a deep breath.
This is your bridge between mind and heart, a place to commune with the sacred.
This is your portal.
It’s all you need.
Well, this and some courage.
Psychologist and holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl offered a very useful way to reframe the question about the meaning of life. Avoid endless ruminating and ask yourself instead: what is this life asking of me?
When he was asked about the meaning of his own life, he wrote the response on a piece of paper and asked his students to guess.
“The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs,” one of them ventured.
“That was it, exactly,” Frankl said. “Those are the very words I had written.” (As recounted in the afterword to Man’s Search for Meaning.)
That’s what I’m talking about.
When you meet pen and paper with undivided attention, curiosity, and courage, you find a gate to your underworld. Like Dante, you must journey through the world of shadows and face all aspects of your being. When you emerge and see the light again, you get a chance to re-write our story. You also get a shot at transcendence.
Once you share your experience, when you bare your soul, you give others permission to do the same. Your soul-searching becomes a portal for both you and the reader (or listener).
How? I am collecting everything I learn about this process on this new page.
Sharing the gold we find is like dropping pebbles in an infinite pond.
The words ripple through time in concentric circles.
They touch the people we love, the people we meet, the people they meet. They may impact people who have not even been born yet.
This is how we move forward.
One page at a time.
I have a funny suspicion, or perhaps a delusion. I am convinced every single one of my readers is part of the answer. “Every soul is vast and wants to express itself fully,” George Saunders wrote in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. Everyone has within them the sparks that will light our way.
We can’t control what the algorithm does. We don’t know how the most influential creators will use their power.
But what we can control is our attention.
What we can do is re-write our own story.
And we can help others do the same.
Our age may require nothing short of a rebellion of authenticity, an insurrection of intimacy.
The goal of this work can be nothing less than transformation. The reward has to be a path to freedom and a new world.
Writing is just one way to do this. It happens to be available at any time, no training or investment required. All you need to do is put the phone down.
Then again, that can be harder than it sounds.
Try it out. You got this.
— Frederik
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