What Matters Most

On one of my business school applications for a particularly prominent west coast school, there is a notorious annual question that every potential student must answer: What matters most to you and why? This is an open-ended question with no word limit. Write what you want and for as long as you want. I have struggled with the question for several weeks now. I have to say my writing. My writing is what matters. The only thing I know I’ll be doing when I’m eighty years old. But articulating why that is… and the transcendence and the joy in it… has been overwhelmingly difficult. I am looking for inspiration from anyone and everywhere – if you’re a writer, why does it matter to you? How do you explain why you do what you do to other people?