Why Should I Blog?

     Why, in an orchestra of honking horns, does one more frustrated driver feel the need to add his wailing beep to the cacophony?  Does this motorist really think that the blaring horns around them were insufficient to portray the true discontent of the crowd?  Does he think that anybody is really listening to his horn above the others?
     The unfathomable expanses of cyberspace echo with forgotten blogs.  Trillions of words are condemned to forever float through the archived memories of this server of the other, profundities to their authors and ramblings to the rest.  And so why then should one more voice add itself to the mob?  What possible contribution could another mind make in the chaotic mass of unchecked opinion?
     In some deep and scarcely acknowledged corner of my heart I see whole families gathering about their computers each Sunday night awaiting my newest entry; a scene reminiscent of the black and white newsreel footage of happy moms and pops gathering the kids around the radio.  In this realm of fantasy millions of eyes roll over my every verb, my every pronoun, memorizing them so that they won't be lost the following morning at the water cooler.
     But we are not motivated by fantasy.  Our actions come from deeper needs and the fantasies fill in around them to suit the desire that already exists.  I am realistic enough to know that my readership is statistically bound to be limited to a few friends, those family members not alienated by my politics and a few fellow voices in the echo-chamber that agree to pretend to be interested in my blogs if I pretend to be interested in theirs.  So why then, knowing all this, do I take the trouble to compose these paragraphs at all?
     I have, of course, wrestled with this question a great deal as I reach toward this first official foray into the blogosphere.  Were I to find in my reflections that my desires were motivated only by arrogance, I may not have written a word.  But as I contemplated, I eventually came to realize that there is a subtle arrogance that motivates all of our actions, be they small or great, benevolent or self-serving.  Confronted with the miniscule prison of mortality while basking in the vastness of eternity, one can be forgiven for even the most desperate attempt to stake out some small slice of forever.  Is this not at the fore of the mind of every artist who lays claim to a new canvas, of every poet who records a verse, to every entrepreneur or politician who first seeks to carve their name into history?  Edmund Hilary did not climb to the peak of Everest because it was there, but rather because he was there and on the potency of this single achievement he will always have been there.
     Thus the simple act of knowing that my thoughts will be archived somewhere deep within the way-back machine will be enough to motivate me each week.  I will find solace in the modest hope that a century from now some historian might happen upon these words and find value in them for no reason but perspective on the politics and grammar of this point in eternity.
     Like all the voices in the blogosphere, I will shout toward the future in the most florid and memorable voice I can muster and hope that some faint echo of my words reach.  And as the distant ears of this unknown era strain to hear me, they will hear Descartes famous syllogism in the past tense: "I thought therefore I was."

Aaron Davies
blognoscor.com