Death, Purpose, and Writing
While driving overnight freight on December 1st, I received a 3am text:
my grandfather probably wouldn’t last the night.
Unfortunately, I was hours away from my family.
A big reason I chose the trucking career was because the freedom of the open road gives me space to think. My mind wanders anywhere with no limitations or interruptions. If people ask me what I think about all day, I can talk for hours.
But if they ask me what I’m feeling?
Radio silence. Static. Empty stretches that span hundreds of miles while I watch the blurring countryside and wait for life. A numb detachment with an aftertaste of failure, because I’m cognizant that while my family gathers, I drive through darkness with the occasional, faceless headlights of strangers to keep me company. We pass each other in silence, stranded by the night.
When I arrived to my destination, fog had rolled in. It swelled into an overcast morning, and the sun struggled to break through. It illuminated a few wisps of cloud like pale memories, and I already knew the news before it came.
While I watched that sunrise at 6am, my grandfather passed.
What happened next? The following night, I still had to drive hundreds of miles home. I made it back around 3am, 24 hours after I received the first text. I was exhausted, but not ready to sleep. I revised instead, tweaking the third installment of a trilogy alongside “final” adjustments to the first in a new series.
And then the feelings came.
Defeat, like rancid milk churning my gut. Despair, like yesterday’s fog enveloping the room. Loneliness, like my truck passing through the night.
Why am I writing this? Why do I write? Does any of it matter? Has any of it mattered?
I’ve learned that writing helps me process my emotions. I walk with entire universes in my head, but ask me what I’m feeling and I stumble. “Fine,” I’ll say. “Great!” Because it’s always fine. It’s always great.
Until it’s not.
Until someone dies in the night. Until families are broken. Until kids are orphaned, wars break counties, and people are bombed to oblivion.
Something is very wrong. It’s a sickness in our countries, in our relationships, and in life itself. There’s pain and hurt all around us, and somehow, I want to help fix it. But how can I help if I don’t know myself? How do any of us help when we’re swimming against a constant, unending current?
I started this post because I’m tired of feeling guilty. I’m finishing the post because it became an anthem, a war cry to anchor me. I’m finishing it because on the drive home, I couldn’t tell you what I felt. But I could tell you I had new ideas for characters and stories, new protagonists who struggle with their fears, aches, and triumphs. Is it wrong to survive a family crisis by tinkering with a manuscript in the wee hours of the morning, alone and quiet, absorbed by worlds infinitely removed from our own?
I don’t understand art, but I know what it does. It reminds us of what’s true and right. It offers glimpses of the hope, beauty, and restoration we crave. It fights the darkness by offering us another story to believe in, illuminating the truths our circumstances dim. It reminds us that there are things to live for, reasons to continue past death and violence and sickness.
My grandfather was a world traveler. He was a 94-year treasure trove of wisdom, experience, and passion. How could I miss that his memories and adventures live on in my writing, reincarnated in worlds that never fade? How could I ignore his zeal in my words, the dialogues with characters who continue to inspire me?
Because of the doubt, the plague that paralyzes me in the early morning; the cloud that hangs heaviest before dawn. Yesterday was a bad day, but that’s okay. I needed the setback to remind me why I continue.
Why do I continue? Because something happened that I can’t understand, and I try to chart it as best I can.
Why does this matter? Because my grandfather’s warmth touched our family for years, and now it touches the world, glimpsed through the stories and triumphs of my characters. Furthermore, I learned from my grandfather that this encouragement doesn’t just include writers, but anyone who has a calling.
How do you recognize a calling? I believe your calling is the ability you’re uniquely designed to chase. It’s the vocation or talent you’re compelled to embrace alongside every setback and disappointment it entails. You’re made for your calling because you’re built to endure its grind, to survive every failure until you crash through the other side, victorious. And if not victorious, you’re bloody and determined. Nothing stops you. You’re not defeated.
Other people look at your calling and they see the highlights. They see the accomplishments and prestige. They want to write a book, but they don’t want the hours or years of agonized plotting. They want to save a life through a successful surgery, but they’re terrified of the schooling, the examinations, and the stakes. They want to inspire children as a schoolteacher, but they’re exhausted by the unruly classrooms, the stifling bureaucracy, and the chronic underappreciation.
My grandfather showed me that to live life well, you find your calling, and you chase it with all your might. You do this because you can handle it, and not everyone can. When you chase your calling and you change lives by doing so, the darkness lessens.
We can’t fix the world, but we can live life well. We can treasure it and steward it by giving ourselves to our callings. We can sit with the dying patient, counsel the angry child, and fix the last chapter. It’s our moment. It’s reaching people. It’s part of the story we’re all sharing, and it can show us more than pain. It can show us hope, truth, and love.
So, yes. I write to help myself process. I write to share my grandad’s life with the world, however nuanced or reshaped by the stories he inspires.
I write because I believe it matters, and so do you. Your calling matters, and you should chase it. Push through the defeat, the despair, and the loneliness.
It’s always worth it.
