Yet Another Weird Thought About Writing

I wondered today if I was the last person on Earth, or marooned on an island with no hope of anyone finding me, and/or if I could only write on materials so transient that they would become unreadable before anyone but me could read them again ... would I still write? I know these aren't original thoughts, but that's where my brain went today. Nothing new under the sun.

Anyway, I think I would write as much as I could. In fact, I think writing would become even more precious to me. I don't think I'd have much time to write in a survival situation, so there's the scarcity principle in action right there.

But I also have a scarcity principle in operation because I work full time, so I have very little (by comparison to the rest of my day, considering that I have chores, have to eat, sleep, etc.) time to write. So writing is precious to me in part because of that.

And I have no guarantee that anyone will find my work, or read it. It's a grain of sand on a vast beach. I would like to be read, but that's not the primary thing motivating me.

Still, there's a chance. In that marooned situation, last person in the world scenario, why would I write?

To ease my loneliness, even if it's only until the tide comes in and sweeps the words from the sand.

I wonder if there's a lonely part inside every writer that writes to make itself feel better. Is it deluded, unaware of all the companionship all around it ... or is that part of a writer the part that's aware that no matter how many friends we have, how close we are to family, or how many pets we cherish, each of us can only live our own lives. As we are each born into one body, that one body must die and no one can take that journey for us, or go with us ...

Our writing is perhaps one of a few things that exists as part of us outside of us. Sculpture, art, music ....

Prehistoric cave paintings on a wall. Made for posterity? Maybe, but even so, their creators were like us. Are us. Found pleasure it extending their existence outside their bodies so they could look at something so much better than a mirror. Art, as a companion? A soul mate?