writing essays and its surprising link to inner peace

when your house is a mess and you can’t move around, the first thing you have to do is to clean it and declutter it

Writing an essay might bring back memories of school or college stress and late-night cramming, but what if I told you it could actually lead to inner peace?

While I’m reading Montaigne—even though I’ve read many other essays before his—, I’m starting to think of it as some kind of mindfulness practice. Writing an essay is often associated with anxiety and assignments, but that’s the educators to blame. I’m starting to understand that it can actually be a path to clearer thoughts and a surprising sense of calm.

I mean, think about Montaigne himself. He decided to be alone with books and his castle to muse about whatever he felt he should. And instead of closing himself in a cocoon, he opened his mind and let his words pour until he got tired of thinking.

Let’s go a little bit deeper into this thought. Writing, in general, forces you to organize your thoughts and that can be a little bit daunting in a life like ours where sometimes we believe that thinking too much is not healthy because it gives us anxiety. However organizing your thoughts naturally leads you to create mental clarity and, therefore, reduce your mental clutter.

Think about it. When your house is a mess and you can’t move around, the first thing you have to do is to clean it and declutter it. So, reducing mental clutter and organizing your thoughts is the first step to inner peace, as well as the first step to writing. There’s our first link: thoughts awareness and decluttering are good for both writing an essay and inner peace.

Let’s move to the essay…

When you reflect on a topic for an essay, a genre whose essential purpose is to make you think about a specific topic and write about it, you organize your ideas, you structure your arguments, and you engage in a process that deepens understanding on that specific matter. Tell me, how many nights have you spent awake “rehearsing” difficult conversations or complex presentations? When you rehearse something, you practice it. In Portuguese, we call it “ensaio”, which comes from the French word “essai”, which made the word “essay.” So… why not put it all down in words?

By doing so, especially in a cathartic manner, you release emotions and clear your mind. I say it “especially in a cathartic manner” because of Aristotle’s theory of catharsis, the release of emotions (and thoughts) through art. Aristotle believed that it led to a sense of emotional balance and intellectual clarity. I’d say that the only condition for that to happen is that we think about what we released…

What I mean is that, much like meditation, writing essays requires focus, mindfulness, and awareness. Emotions. But also a little bit of reason. You release everything that is inside you about that topic, then find reasoning to structure your arguments and improve your understanding of that topic, making it less stressful. And here’s another inner-peace link.

Also, you channel your thoughts and emotions into something constructive, transforming anxiety into clarity, and you turn your messy words into an interesting piece of writing. And because you use all that to create art, to create words, you also gain a certain sense of accomplishment that comes with completing an essay.

In sum…

Clear your thoughts, organize your ideas, let your emotions out while writing them, then add arguments and reason to all that, and you’ll find balance and intellectual clarity. Inner peace.

A good way to do that is to set up a peaceful place to take a break and write with calm. It is very important that you write essays without thinking of them as essays but rather like thoughts in a journal. Nothing prevents you, though, from dividing your writing process into manageable steps like brainstorming, outlining, drafting, and revising, but don’t think too much about it if you want to use this to find peace. Avoid anything that can overwhelm you in the process.

Focus on the journey of writing rather than just the “final piece”, the essay. Use that as a personal growth habit, where you talk to yourself about the things that you don’t know about or the things that you know a lot about and you feel the urge to put it all down in words for future generations.

Give it a try and let me know how you feel.